Mark Wahlberg has been around town over the last few weeks filming for his new “Patriots Day” movie that’s going to chronicle the Boston Marathon bombings and the heroism and courage that grew from that terrible event.
The artist formerly known as Marky Mark was also reportedly promising to some of the marathon runners on Monday morning that he was going to do the movie the right way and do justice to the victims, the survivors and the days, weeks and months of coming together that Boston experienced during the Boston Strong movement that followed.
We all hope and expect that’s going to be true given how strongly everyone in Boston feels about the events of three years ago.
But it caused more than a bit of a ripple when Wahlberg wanted to film scenes in the exact same Watertown neighborhoods where the shootouts took place three years ago. Now, we have a bit of hockey news from the Wahlberg movie that might rub diehard Bruins fans the wrong way when it comes to the film’s casting.
Apparently, infamous cheap shot artist and agitator Sean Avery has been cast to play the role of one of the Watertown police officers in the made-in-Boston movie. Avery posted a picture of himself in a Watertown Police uniform with the hashtag #ironic, an Instagram post denoting his acting career is going to kick off playing one of Boston’s Finest in the major motion picture.
Avery was no friend to the Black and Gold during his NHL career, was involved in a couple of brouhahas with the B’s including the famous Nov. 1, 2008 game where he boarded Milan Lucic, and then dropped the gloves with Marc Savard of all people. Avery also cheap-shotted Tim Thomas in the back of the head with a sneaky move a couple of years later as a member of the New York Rangers.
Clearly, Wahlberg can cast whomever he wants in his movies, but we can think of 100 former or current NHL players that would have been a better fit to play a Watertown cop than the universally reviled Avery.
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How about former Bruins enforcer and legitimate tough guy Shawn Thornton to start with?
