The Town

Jesse Thompson

The Town Movie Review

            Ben Affleck does an excellent job in his fourth directing job with creating an entertaining crime action drama with the film The Town. The movie's action sequences are put together skillfully and contain a large amount of attention to detail for creating tension and raising the stakes.  Affleck stars both behind the camera and also in front of it in this film. The Town is an adaptation of Chuck Hogan's novel the novel Prince of Thieves with the screenplay written by Ben Affleck along with Peter Craig, and Aaron Stockard.

            Affleck plays Doug MacRay, the brains behind a group of Charleston townie criminals who carry out numerous high profile bank heists in nun, skeleton, and other various masks across the bridge in nearby Boston. Doug started out as a local hockey hero, but his stints in the NHL ended shortly when he couldn't shake off his trouble making habits. After their latest robbery involves taking a hostage, the bank manager, Claire Keesey, played by Rebecca Hall, whom they later leave unharmed when they get away. Doug persuades his partner in crime, Jem, that he himself will deal with it and check up on her to make sure she doesn't remember anything from the incident that could identify them with the crime. Doug begins to fall for her instead, and starts formulating a exit strategy to his criminal lifestyle .

             His wishes to  finally leave the town and trappings of crime behind to start a new life elsewhere are thwarted when he has no choice but to carry out one final grand take by robbing Fenway Park in broad daylight. He is told forced by the criminal boss, the florist, played by Pete Postlethwaite that if he doesn't pull off this robbery like he is told, then not only he but also his new girlfriend by him but also Claire will incur the consequences.  Postlethwaite evokes a villanious Daniel Day Lewis in his role as the treacherous florist, but that dark grittiness he takes his character is further than the rest of the characters reach in the movie. 

            Doug's lifelong best friend, Jem, played by Jeremy Renner, also cannot stand the idea of him getting out of the robbery business. Jem sees Doug desire to leave as a betrayal of loyalty, for Jem spent several years locked up for murdering a young man whom he heard was imminently planning to kill Doug that day. Also Jem wishes Doug and instead stay and help care for the child of his drug addicted sister with whom Doug was involved with on and off again in the past and they feel he is ditching out on both of them.  While the bond between Doug and Jem, is built up from an early childhood friendship and based on a thick as thieves mentality when it comes to loyalty , this movies seems to be missing more that would evoke that strong connection and create more compelling drama between the characters when the ties of friendship between them is fraying at the edges and finally when Doug witnesses the FBI and police forces gun his partner down in the street. Jeremy Renner does an excellent job as Jem but his character is not explored deeper than his outward criminal characterization.

            I thought both Chris Cooper in the role of Doug's imprisoned father and Blake Lively as Jem's sister were both well acted in their short screen time. Jon Hamm on FBI agent Adam Frawley on the other hand I thought was a weak choice or weakly written character perhaps. As the FBI agent tasked with taking down Doug and his band of bandits, Adam's character, while charming and funny, comes off as interesting as white bread and it's never believable this seemingly dimwitted FBI agent would be able to put up a strong challenger in hopes of defeating our hero.

            Although the character's relationships feel too formulaic for this movie to take itself as seriously as it wishes as a compelling character drama, it is certainly entertaining. The cinematography captures the locations in Boston and Charlestown's neighborhoods vividly and generates great energy in its action scenes especially certain car sequences that wind through the buildings and streets and the siege of Fenway Park when the last robbery goes awry. This movie could have been among the year's best for me if it had been willing to go somewhat darker and offered a less predictable ending.