The Town: Review

After the surprisingly great Gone Baby Gone the anticipation for Affleck’s next directing gig was pretty damn high. Thankfully though The Town delivers and while I do prefer Gone Baby, this is still a great film.

The plot concerns a group of bank robbers in Charlestown, Boston, a place that has become synonymous with crime for the BPD. After a bank robbery which ended in a hostage situation leader of the group Doug has to deal with a potential witness, however situation spiral out of his control and he ends up dating her instead of killing her. So now Doug has to hide his true identity from his new girlfriend, he has to hide his new girlfriend from his mates and he has to hide from the F.B.I. who are closing in around him. The plot isn’t the most original and it has a sense of ‘Seen it all before’ about it but it makes for a good story and there’s certainly a few great moments that come about because of this plot.

The characters and acting are all great, everyone here is performing one of their bests. At the head and heart of this film is Ben Affleck as Doug McCray, you get the sense that Doug is trying to turn his life around near the beginning, he doesn’t drink, he’s stopped doing drugs but he can’t find a way out of the robberies. When he meets Claire he finds that she could be his ticket out, it also seems like she’s the first time he’s ever seen the after-effects of one of his robberies and it only convinces him to get out sooner. That’s all Doug ever wants, to escape Charlestown, to not end up sad, old and alone inside a prison cell like his father.

Rebecca Hall plays Doug’s love interest Claire, she’s an assistant manager at the first bank the guys rob and ends up being the hostage they take to escape. Hall plays Claire really well, we can see how much being a hostage has affected her, we see how being with Doug helps her and we see how this restored confidence crumbles down when she finds out the truth. However, even with the F.B.I. breathing down her neck and her telling Doug to walk into a trap she warns him at the last minute, showing that despite all the lying she still cares about Doug and it’s a nice way for the character to go.

Jon Hamm takes what can only be described as the antagonist role playing F.B.I. agent Adam Frawley, Frawley can best be described as a dickhead, he doesn’t take shit from Charlestown punks, he wants these guys found and if he gets his way he’d bury them. It’s a good role for Hamm all on his own because he sells the smart but still a dickhead agent gig but for everyone who’s use to seeing Hamm as the smooth Don Draper this role is all the better given the dramatic differences between the two.

And of course Jeremy Renner is damn near the best thing in this movie playing Doug’s right hand man and best friend Jem Coughlin. Jem is a psychopath, he killed a man at 18 and did 9 years inside for it, he shoots guns like nobody’s business, always making sure there’s no-one in his way. However he’s an honourable psychopath, he killed the man because he was coming to kill Doug, he tries to keep Doug from running knowing the main crime boss would come after him and he even stays quiet after finding out about Claire.

There’s also a few good roles from some minor characters, Blake Lively is nearly unrecognizable as the drunken crack whore Kris who’s daughter may or may not be Doug’s. Chris Cooper has a small but memorable role as Doug’s asshole father and the late great Pete Postlethwaite (I hope to Christ I spelt that right) is chilling as crime boss ‘The Florist’.

Now as a said before, Gone Baby Gone proved Affleck as a great director and this film just enhances that proof. This is an incredibly well made film, the small moments with the characters are great because we’re made to care about them, we feel the tension when Jem and Claire meet for the first time outside the bank robbery, we understand Doug’s desire to get out of Charlestown and we feel the same despair, then hope when he has to leave Claire. But where this film truly shines is the action scenes, there’s only a few of them but their all great, the opening bank robbery is a brilliant way to start a film, the nun robbery results in a car chase throughout Boston that includes, fire-fights, car switching and a dash towards a bridge that’s going to be closed, trapping the fugitives out of Charlestown (It also ends with a cop seeing the robbers but being smart enough to turn away). The finale though is fuckin great, the last hit, Fenway Park, $3 Million in cash and it all goes wrong because of one jealous bitch. You hold your breath through the whole robbery, waiting for something to go wrong and it isn’t until you think they got away that you see an army of F.B.I. waiting for the robbers. The fire-fight, the ambulance crash and The Last Stand that all follow are brilliant and leave with a high but you’re still sad to see it end this way for the characters. If I have any problems it’s that the last five minutes feel too safe, too fairytale, it’s nicely ambiguous and leaves you hoping that the characters will see each other but it’s a little too sweet.

The Town is a great film, a tad more erratic than Gone Baby Gone but a solid sophomore effort from Affleck, the characters are all brilliant, the direction is tight and the action scenes are some of the best since the great Heat. Highly recommended.

8.5/10