Ben Affleck once again proves a better director than actor in a muscular crime film that falls short of its intended caliber, but hits hard enough to divert nevertheless.
There is a moment in The Town of such breathless and ratchet-tight tension that had the whole movie lived up to that single moment, one can imagine what a stunning thriller this might have made. It involves an element that is crucial to the unfolding of the plot and an attempt by a character to cover it up, and had the character failed the movie would have been a lot shorter. So carefully calibrated is this moment that when the character succeeds in his goal you heave a sigh of relief.
As it stands, The Town is a very well-crafted genre exercise, but sadly, not a memorable story. The opening credits of the film inform us that the Charlestown area of Boston has produced more bank robbers than any other place on Earth. And in a way, Boston native Ben Affleck wants to make this his own sort of City of God: a depiction of a community held together by its common involvement in the shady world of crime, that also functions as a kind of morality play of men struggling under the eyes of flawed but capricious contemporary equivalents of the Greek Gods.
Affleck plays Doug MacRay, the brains of a notorious and highly skilled bunch of bank robbers whose leader is apparently Jim (Jeremy Renner), an affectionate yet violent thug whose brain does far less thinking than his trigger finger and yet fancies himself a real badass. Other denizens of Charlestown include a fiercely wiry boss nicknamed The Florist (Pete Postlethwaite), Jim’s sister, single mother Crystal (Blake Lively) and Doug’s hard-bitten father, Stephen (Chris Cooper).
The “Gods” here are a pair of calculating FBI agents named Dino and Frawley, played by Titus Welliver and Jon Hamm respectively, who also act as a Greek chorus for the audience. Impersonal, but dedicated to their cause, they in turn intimidate, humiliate and cajole their targets in bending to their will. They don’t like their targets, they don’t hate their targets, they just have to stop them.
A daring and clever robbery on a bank in the beginning is what sets the stage for the ensuing conflict between Macray’s bunch of bank robbers and the FBI. Macray’s bunch rob a bank and take hostage beautiful bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall), who also becomes an asset to the FBI that will be used to bring down MacRay’s bunch. As MacRay tracks down Claire to ensure she does not jeopardize his gang’s future, he and Claire slowly fall in love. Will they be able to worm their way out of the mess as the equally impersonal, merciless worlds of organized crime and organized law enforcement and the emotionally traumatic weight of their pasts bear down upon them?
Affleck has a real feel for his actors, and while this reviewer has always found his own screen presence to be especially inert, thankfully here he allows his cast members to outshine him, especially scene-stealing is Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker, here as a character who is both incredibly loyal and brutal, to the point of frequently sabotaging his teammates. His loose cannon behaviour is out of place in a profession that requires discipline. The screenplay by Affleck, Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard on the other hand seems incredibly thin, what with most characters not being very well fleshed-out. But once again after the superlative Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck once again proves a better director than actor in a muscular crime film that falls short of its intended calibre, but hits hard enough nevertheless.
There is a moment in
The Town of such breathless and ratchet-tight tension that had the whole movie lived up to that single moment, one can imagine what a stunning thriller this might have made. It involves an element that is crucial to the unfolding of the plot and an attempt by a character to cover it up, and had the character failed the movie would have been a lot shorter. So carefully calibrated is this moment that when the character succeeds in his goal you heave a sigh of relief.
As it stands, The Town is a very well-crafted genre exercise, but sadly, not a memorable story. The opening credits of the film inform us that the Charlestown area of Boston has produced more bank robbers than any other place on Earth. And in a way, Boston native Ben Affleck wants to make this his own sort of City of God: a depiction of a community held together by its common involvement in the shady world of crime, that also functions as a kind of morality play of men struggling under the eyes of flawed but capricious contemporary equivalents of the Greek Gods.
Affleck plays Doug MacRay, the brains of a notorious and highly skilled bunch of bank robbers whose leader is apparently Jim (Jeremy Renner), an affectionate yet violent thug whose brain does far less thinking than his trigger finger and yet fancies himself a real badass. Other denizens of Charlestown include a fiercely wiry boss nicknamed The Florist (Pete Postlethwaite), Jim’s sister, single mother Crystal (Blake Lively) and Doug’s hard-bitten father, Stephen (Chris Cooper).
The “Gods” here are a pair of calculating FBI agents named Dino and Frawley, played by Titus Welliver and Jon Hamm respectively, who also act as a Greek chorus for the audience. Impersonal, but dedicated to their cause, they in turn intimidate, humiliate and cajole their targets in bending to their will. They don’t like their targets, they don’t hate their targets, they just have to stop them.
A daring and clever robbery on a bank in the beginning is what sets the stage for the ensuing conflict between Macray’s bunch of bank robbers and the FBI. Macray’s bunch rob a bank and take hostage beautiful bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall), who also becomes an asset to the FBI that will be used to bring down MacRay’s bunch. As MacRay tracks down Claire to ensure she does not jeopardize his gang’s future, he and Claire slowly fall in love. Will they be able to worm their way out of the mess as the equally impersonal, merciless worlds of organized crime and organized law enforcement and the emotionally traumatic weight of their pasts bear down upon them?
Affleck has a real feel for his actors, and while this reviewer has always found his own screen presence to be especially inert, thankfully here he allows his cast members to outshine him, especially scene-stealing is Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker, here as a character who is both incredibly loyal and brutal, to the point of frequently sabotaging his teammates. His loose cannon behaviour is out of place in a profession that requires discipline. The screenplay by Affleck, Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard on the other hand seems incredibly thin, what with most characters not being very well fleshed-out. But once again after the superlative Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck once again proves a better director than actor in a muscular crime film that falls short of its intended calibre, but hits hard enough nevertheless.
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Positively not a good film.
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