Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Ben Affleck
Rebecca Hall
Blake Lively
Slaine
Directed by:
Ben Affleck....*facepalm*....again
Fate works in mysterious ways sometimes. You can lose your job and lose your wife during the same week for example...or...you can watch two movies directed by Ben Affleck. Tough times call for emergency measures and in order to make me snap out of my professional exhaustion, AT hauled my ass to the movies so we saw...THE TOWN *thunder roars*
Let me give Affleck a break here. The movie ain't half bad. In fact, it's slightly better than his adaptation of Gone Baby Gone. It's a step further down the road to respectful films, the same that took Clint Eastwood, an obvious mentor of his. The Town is the story of Charlestown, a district of Boston where apparently bank robberies are as common as newspaper delivery. Doug MacRay (Affleck) once a drafted hockey player, took over his father's duties as bank robber extraordinaire and terrorizes THE TOWN with his crew, uzis and thematic plastic masks. The crew wasn't doing so bad until a courageous young woman (Rebecca Hall) was taken in hostage by loose cannon Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) and had therefore to be watched from up close. MacRay sacrifies himself to the tasks, falls in love while Couglin wants to rob more banks and more armored trucks...well you can feel the tension rising I'm sure.
The best way I can describe The Town is to have you to imagine a base-ball player. Imagine he swings to hard on the ball that he does a 360 degrees turn and his helmet slides over his face. No matter if he hit the ball or not, he looks a little dumb. The Town is as entertaining in its merits as in its flaws. Readers of Dennis Lehane will feel its influence on the story, but its been obviously written with the intention of being gritty and gut-wretching...and therefore it feels forced.
Really forced.
No like...really.
Some of the scenes don't even make sense. For example, there's a car chase scene where MacRay's crew barely escapes the police. They torch the car and switch to the next vehicle, which loses the cops but they keep going fast, wearing their masks and wielding their guns, for no reasons. The cops didn't see their license. Also, the bankrobbing crew does like...I don't know, 4 jobs a week? With the FBI on their tail? They keep yapping about having heat on but they can't stop robbing banks! Of course they'll have heat on! It's sometimes hard to get sympathy for the characters.
The Town does a few things very well though. First, Affleck really tries hard to play well. He does his Affleck face (when he puckers up in aggressive discontentment) a few times, but manages to keep it under control. Rebecca Hall is very good too, remniscient of Isabelle Blais, she does a sweet portrait of innocence. Most characters of the support crew feel like carboard cut-outs, the most obviously being Pete Postelwaite, the crime boss with no other purpose of being a mean crime boss. Jon Hamm is also unconvincing as token FBI guy.
Also, an important perk of The Town is its ending. Rare are the endings that live up to their stories, but Affleck's tale of Robin Hood-ism ends in a original and strong note. Somewhat even stronger than its story. I was entertained by The Town. It's not perfect by any means, but in a gloomy Friday, it got the job done. It's one of the interesting cops & robbers movies I have seen lately. It won't go down in history, not even in my movie collection, but it was worth 11$ and will be even more worthy of your 5$ for rental.
SCORE: 74%
