Avaliação por breheneyjames

'Stronger' is based on a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombings named Jeff Bauman who lost his legs from the knee down in the attack. It is written by John Pollono and directed by David Gordon Green. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Jeff Bauman and Tatiana Maslany his love interest. Both give powerful performances and their chemistry is electric. Miranda Richardson also puts in a noteworthy turn as Patty Bauman, Jeff's mother. 'Stronger' manages to side-step cheap sentimentalism seen in other similar movies and instead resorts to gritty realism which is very effective. Green directs many affecting scenes throughout. There are two that particularly resonated with me; the one in which Bauman has a conversation with the man who helped save his life on the day of the attack and one where he interacts with a man, who is inspired by his resiliency, near the end of the film.

Despite all this the movie does have some flaws particularly concerning character development in the first act which is by far the weakest third in the film. The movie doesn't delve deep enough into what Jeff was like before the tragedy. We get a small handful of scenes showing the lead up to the marathon and then about 15 minutes into the movie the incident at the marathon occurs. I feel if there was more time spent before the attack so the characters were more fleshed out then the film would have felt less rushed overall.

Still even with this contrivance , 'Stronger' has a lot more going for it than not and it is better than the average inspirational biographical drama. I recommend checking this out.