Skip to footer

'Stronger' actor Jake Gyllenhaal is better than the movie

( R ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

Gyllenhaal plays Jeff Bauman, who lost his legs during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and shows us the full effects of Bauman’s trauma.

|
Scott Garfield/Roadside Attractions/AP
Tatiana Maslany and Jake Gyllenhaal star in 'Stronger.'
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

Jake Gyllenhaal is often better than the movies he appears in, and this is true once again in “Stronger,” in which he plays Jeff Bauman, who lost his legs during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Gyllenhaal shows us the full effects of Bauman’s trauma; his agonizing, moment-by-moment rehabilitation is convincingly rendered. And Bauman’s resistance to the ways in which people, including his mother (Miranda Richardson), tried to prop him up as an inspirational icon are equally convincing.

Director David Gordon Green, working from a script by John Pollono based on the bestselling memoir by Bauman and Bret Witter, stages some sequences between Bauman and his on-again-off-again girlfriend (a fine Tatiana Maslany) that have the grit of lived-in experience. But too much of this movie is a conventionally rendered gloss that, in its own way, also attempts to cast Bauman as an inspirational icon. He is, but we can see in Gyllenhaal’s looks of grief and panic the makings of the more complex movie this might have been. Grade: B- (Rated R for language throughout, some graphic injury images, and brief sexuality/nudity.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Stronger' actor Jake Gyllenhaal is better than the movie
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2017/0922/Stronger-actor-Jake-Gyllenhaal-is-better-than-the-movie
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe