Starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Rated 14A

The title is not Strength, but Stronger. This invites the question:  Starting with the aphorism that whatever doesn’t kill you, et cetera, this surprisingly downbeat film doesn’t offer many answers, but that’s to its benefit.

Certainly, the movie’s best muscle comes in the form of Jake Gyllenhaal, powerfully restrained as Jeff Bauman, who became a national symbol when he survived the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Based on Bauman’s memoir, as adapted by John Pollono, the film was directed by David Gordon Green, who hasn’t turned out to be much of a stylist since his indie breakthrough in the early 2000s, with All the Real Girls. Here, his protean, meat-and-potatoes style suits the Boston working-class milieu, even if it relies too heavily on beer-and-bullshit tropes familiar from The Fighter and other Southie-set stories.

Here, in Melissa Leo’s place, Miranda Richardson has a turn as the iron-willed, booze-pickled, chain-smoking matriarch. When Jeff is in the wrong place at the right time—he’s also able to eyeball the terror attack’s lead suspect—she sees him as her belated ticket to glory. His peers are supportive, but not very bright. “I gotta tell ya,” says a pal who’s alone in the hospital when Bauman comes out of his coma, “there was a bomb, an’ your fuckin’ legs are gone!”

With buddies like that, he’s lucky to get more sensitive aid from his sometime girlfriend, Erin (Canada’s terrific Tatiana Maslany), who was in the race. Jeff took time off from his Costco job to cheer her on at the marathon, and he continues to be bigger on grand gestures than small details. He starts drinking heavily and blowing off appointments with rehab and Erin—who is not exactly welcomed by mommy dearest.

The tale is best when it explores Jeff’s ambivalence at being literally thrust into the spotlight. Although he gradually embraces his role as a vague inspiration, it usually causes problems, as when a drunken bar stooge accuses him of being part of “Obama’s false-flag excuse for getting us into a war with Eye-ran”. “I got news for ya,” Jeff shoots back. “We’re already in a war with Eye-ran!”

That’s about as close to political satire as things get, and the two-hour film suffers from some of the same nameless torpor—or lack of strength, perhaps—many Americans feel after decades of relentless conflict. When Erin wheels Jeff onto the ice as honorary captain at a huge Boston Bruins game, she whispers, “Just wave the flag and then we can leave.” On some level, millions agree.