The Town is evidence of what you may have suspected after Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone: Ben Affleck’s true calling is not as an actor but as a writer-director. This Boston-set crime caper–Affleck’s sophomore directorial outing–has all the wit, thrills, and character development that many of his acting roles lack.
The titular town in this case is Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood, which an opening screen announces has given rise to more bank robbers than any other square-mile in the country. Affleck plays Douglas McRay, the brains behind a talented and prolific crew of stick-up men, which also includes his ultraviolent best friend, Jim (Jeremy Renner).
In the film’s tightly orchestrated opening scenes, the crew holds up a Cambridge bank. When a bank employee trips the silent alarm, Jim pistol-whips him to within an inch of his life and then takes the bank manager, Claire (Rebecca Hall), hostage as insurance should the cops catch up with them. Doug plays good robber to Jim’s bad robber, comforting Claire and ultimately setting her free unharmed.
When Jim discovers that the ‘toonie’ girl (that’s Charlestownian for gentrifying interloper) lives just blocks away from them, he wants to silence her for good. Instead, Doug volunteers to tail her and figure out what she knows. After striking up a laundromat conversation about quarters, the two end up dating and falling in love. But that love story is threatened by hardnosed FBI Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm), who’s hell-bent on putting Doug and his gang behind bars for good.
The love story may at first glance seem far-fetched–the way that Claire pronounces her “r’s” alone signifies the gaping class chasm between the two–but Affleck, along with writing partners Aaron Stockard (also a collaborator on the script for Gone Baby Gone) and Pete Craig, craft a tale that is completely believable. Perhaps it’s the clever dialogue, which allows the characters to develop in three dimensions (no eyewear required). Doug is not just some criminal Irish dunderhead; he is as funny, smart, self-aware and emotionally vulnerable as he is tough-guy cavalier.
At one point, Claire admits to Doug that she saw a tattoo on one of her hostage takers but is torn about whether or not to tell Frawley. Doug offers her advice on why it’s in her best interest not to, and she’s surprised that he knows so much about the criminal system. He tells her in best Boston patois, “I watch a lawt of CSI. You know. New Yahk, Miami. And Bones, too.”
As director, Affleck excels at establishing a sense of place. The second heist (the film features three, each with escalating stakes) ends in a car chase through Boston’s narrow, colonial street system. Affleck’s lens offers a tour through his hometown’s physical and cultural topography as the bank robbers’ minivan jumps sidewalks, clips police cruisers and careens into pedestrian sedans in an effort to make it across a bridge before Frawley can close it off. It’s an edge-of-your-seat pursuit–with the criminals dressed in nun masks, no less–that ends like none you’ve ever seen before.
Casting for The Town is also superb. Renner, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his raw-nerve performance in last year’s The Hurt Locker brings his A-game to this even more maniacal–but not cartoonishly so–character. Jim isn’t evil, but his upbringing has taught him to live by the proverbial sword. You know how the rest of that saying goes.
Blake Lively is surprisingly good as Krista, Jim’s sister and Doug’s on-again, off-again girlfriend. Not only does she master the dialect, her portrayal is gritty in a way you could hardly expect from the Gossip Girl. Kudos to the costume, hair and makeup teams for getting her low-rise jeans, gold hoop earrings and white-trash manicure just right.
Hall also delivers a solid, if non-virtuoso, performance as Claire. And appearances by favorite character actors – old (Pete Posthlewaite as an odious, sadistic mob boss and Chris Cooper as jailed Poppa McRay) and new (Titus Welliver as a Boston gumshoe) are clever, welcome additions.
Sadly (at least for this avid Mad Men fan), Hamm is the weakest link in the acting chain. It’s true that his character is the least developed by the script. Still, there’s one scene where Frawley and Doug meet face-to-face for the first time that presents an opportunity to really sizzle. But Hamm fumbles the play, throwing away a line that could have been a character definer.
However, one lackluster performance isn’t enough to set this film off its rails. The Town is a thrilling heist film, impeccably written and directed with actual depth. I’ve heard that Ben Affleck considers Harrison Ford–whose acting shoes he failed to fill as the young Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears–a career role model. But his current career trajectory has him looking more like Clint Eastwood every day. No small feat for a Townie.
The Town is an overrated, cartoon-like piece of junk that’s more like a feature-length soap opera than a regular movie, with a poor to mediocre cast, crippled directing, and dull acting, except for Jeremy Renner. The Doug/Claire romance is tepid and implausible. What would an educated woman like Claire Keesey who makes a decent salary as a bank manager and owns an expensive condo in the gentrified section of Charlestown find so appealing about a total loser like Doug MacRay, who not only turns out to be the ringleader of the thugs who knocked over her bank just afew days before he’d met her “by chance” in a town laundromat, but is an armed felon and wanted fugitive, with a criminal record, including theft and murder, to boot?
The idea of those two falling in love and being together doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t buy it.
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