I’ve made it a point not to understand people who don’t like Ben Affleck. The guy is charming and has never been hesitant to poke fun at himself (“Word, bitch! Phantoms like a motherfucker!” he proudly proclaims in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). But he did a good job of silencing the haters with 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone. Of course, then came the chorus, “He should just stay behind the camera!” Now with his new film The Town, he’s directing and starring and he does a great job at both. While his new effort isn’t quite the emotional powerhouse he delivered with Gone Baby Gone, The Town is a thrilling ride that’s worth taking.
Some towns produce great athletes, some towns produce great scientists, and Charlestown, Massachusettes produces great bank robbers. The city has the highest number of bank robberies per capita. The Town centers on one crew of bank robbers led by Doug MacRay (Affleck). After one heist, the crew decides to take a hostage (Rebecca Hall) just in case they’re tracked down by the fuzz during their getaway. After making their escape and releasing the hostage without any problems, they discover that she lives in Charlestown and can possibly indentify them. Doug decides to get close to her to make sure she doesn’t talk and the two begin to develop a romantic relationship (although it remains unknown to her that he was one of her captors). That conceit strains credulity but the chemistry between Affleck and Hall makes it work. Of course, external forces including MacRay’s hot-headed best friend (Jeremy Renner) and a relentless FBI agent (Jon Hamm) threaten to not only put a halt to this bizarre love story, but to land Doug in jail for the rest of his life.
The Town is permeated with brutal fatalism. We see these men whose fathers taught them the trade of bank robbery, which is exciting to watch but deadly to practice. Affleck’s direction is spot-on as he creates breathlessly exciting heist scenes, but has the restraint to let the actors carry the rest of the film. The script does rely a bit too heavily on characters stating exactly what they want or what another character wants, but the cast turns in strong work and holds our attention through the matter-of-fact dialogue.
However, the film is almost so tight that it could use a little time to breathe and give little moments to supporting characters. Jon Hamm’s FBI agent is never given time to be anything more than just a raging ass-hole and we don’t know why he hates bank robbers with the fury most people reserve for murderers and rapists. Blake Lively plays a spurned love interest of Doug’s, but the character is absent from the movie until the third act. While we always know where every character is coming from, the script and the pacing has some trouble naturally getting there.
But this is a minor complaint when stacked up against Affleck’s strong lead performance and serious directing chops. Gone Baby Gone is the stronger overall film, but the three action scenes of The Town are filled with so much excitement, drama, and comedy that they made me wonder what Affleck could do with a straight-up action film rather than contained action scenes in an intimate crime drama. With The Town, Affleck has established himself as directing talent to be reckoned with and serves up a reminder that his acting skills shouldn’t be disregarded. But if you still want to hold on to your bizarre Affleck-hate, you’re only hurting yourself if you pass on this solid drama.
Rating: B
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Affleck, you the *bomb* in Phantoms yo!
Some of the movie reporting sites are controlled by people who are banging their heads against the Hollywood door trying to get inside as actual filmmakers. When they are constatly turned away, because they have no talent, they become HATERS. So they make it their mission to destroy people they feel they’re more talented than. There is no objectivity and you have to be smart enough, as a reader, to weed through the bullshit. People were killing Affleck and his movie months before it was ever seen. Some were even making references to his days with Jennifer Lopez. Pathetic.
Well, Ben Affleck is a very overated actor, and “The Town” is an overrated, overhyped movie with a stupidly implausible story, imho. Hey…do you really believe that the thuggish leader of a band of professional thieves who’ve robbed, assaulted and killed people in order to get what they want, who has a heart of gold which is stolen by the princess-like bank manager exists in real life? Do you really think that Doug and his men, in real life, wouldn’t have gang-raped and offed Claire just to shut her up because she’s a witness? Unlike you, I’m sure that would’ve happened.
Not to blow you up Matt, but it’s Jay who says that quote and it’s, “Phantoms like a mallfucker!”
So, nothing particularly stands out from J. Renner’s performance?
I was thinking his performance would be a supportive role steal..
Good review. Solid movie but Gone Baby Gone was better.
I liked THE TOWN a lot but there was something missing. The trailer made it look F*cking GREAT. After I saw it, it was just pretty good.
Maybe Affleck being the lead brought it down a little. DOn’t get me wrong I like Affleck. I’ve never been an Affleck hater but I always thought he was better at supporting roles. He’s a great director and maybe just maybe he should have stayed behind the camera on this one.
Jeremy Renner was great. I totally believed him.
I am sorry , God Bless Ben Affleck, but I have to agree with Junierizzle. We just returned from seeing the film a few hours ago and it wasn’t as great as people have been saying or as exciting as the trailer shows. It was just a decent movie not a bad one nor a great one either. I am also one that has liked Affleck better in supporting roles. I don’t dislike him – he is a good actor. Renner was so much more believeable in his role though. Ben seems to be a fantastic screenwriter, director and producer. I believe Ben and Matt Damon won an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting. He is so gifted in other areas. He is a good actor but not a great one. He is however so gifted in everything else.
Hmm, big action movie from WB coming out for Christmas 2012. Wonder if Chris Nolan has found a director yet??
Hmm, big action movie from WB coming out for Christmas 2012. Wonder if Chris Nolan has found a director yet??
hi.everyone ,welcome to ==== h t t p : // u g g b o o t s s h o p . h k ======
welcome to : ====== h t t p : // u g g b o o t s s h o p . h k =======
“..I like to pick up girls on the rebound from a disappointing relationship. They’re much more in need of solace and they’re fairly open to suggestion. And, I use that to fuck them some place very uncomfortable.”
“What, like the back of a Volkswagen? ”
Hope the female lead stayed away from the Fahrvergnügen!!
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What did you think about ‘The Town’? http://bit.ly/a7CF6C
The town looks so horror i share this article with my latest community in gmail.com
check out The Regular Joe opinion of it at http://theregjoe.blogspot.com/2010/10/movie-review-town.html
The Town is overrated, with a mediocre cast at best, and the Doug/Claire romance takes up far too much of the story, imo. Also, the scenes in the North End and Fenway Park are totally overblown and unrealistic, plus the scene where Doug and Jem break into the apartment of some guys who’d supposedly harassed Claire and wasn’t included in the book, was totally unnecessary and brutal.
The ending was rather bad, imo, and too loose. I would’ve preferred to see Doug get sent back to prison for his crimes, and Claire be criminally prosecuted herself or put on some sort of probation for aiding/abetting an armed felon and wanted fugitive (Doug MacRay), especially by tipping him off with a “sunny days” code when Frawley and the Feds were literally on the verge of nabbing Doug and sending him to prison), thus enabling him to elude the law, and for receiving stolen goods (Doug’s ill-gotten money that he buried in Claire’s garden for her before skipping town for Florida).
Frankly, I think that the people who enjoyed The Town are either quite naive and shortsighted, or willfully stupid, whoever they are.
I hate the fact that it asks the audience to sympathize with Doug MacRay and his men, who were a bunch of marauding armed bank/armored car robbers, thugs and killers, with long criminal records.
Not only that, the audience is also asked to sympathize with Claire, who, while being robbed at gunpoint wasn’t her fault, she was beyond stupid, or naive to not only rise to Doug’s bait when he met her “by chance” in a laundromat after following her for several weeks before he and his men knocked over her bank, but for the fact that she stuck with him even after learning who he was, helped Doug escape the law in the end by tipping him off with a “sunny days” code to the Feds’ presence in her house, but spent stolen money that wasn’t hers on the renovation of a seedy hockey rink, all after the fact that Doug MacRay, not FBI Adam Frawley, was the one who turned Claire’s life upside down, seduced and made a fool out of her, and traumatized her in the first place. Claire, imo, doesn’t deserve any pity either.
I also resent the fact that, since most people like The Town, they’re intolerant of any dissenting opinions. I also might add that Ben Affleck, imo, is an overrated actor. He’s not very good, really. Honestly, I’ve never seen a movie, no matter how bad it was, that generated so much anger and resentment as The Town. It not only glorifies Boston’s worst history, but it normalizes both the Stockholm Syndrome and the Lima Syndrome (the inverse of the Stockholm Syndrome), and promotes relationships that result from such syndromes as healthy and normal, when in fact, in either case, the captive is victimized further, due to becoming a person who is not only at her captor’s beck and call, but is constantly under his control and manipulation.
The fact that so many people can fall for this cheap, hyped-up POS film is, I’m sad to say, believable, since the dumbing down of America has continued, without letup.
This is something that still continues to dog me, even though I’ve written about it so many times. Why, oh why do so many people fall for such a hyped-up, cheap, overrated, trashy movie such as The Town, and, more to the point, refuse to accept dissenting opinions on it? It beats me…I don’t know!
I admit to one thing, however: The Town left me rooting for the cops and the FBI, especially Agt. Adam Frawley and wanting them to catch Doug MacRay and his men and send them to jail for their crimes, and to have Claire either criminally prosecuted herself for being an accessory to Doug’s crimes and for tipping him Doug off with a “sunny days” code and enabling him to elude the law, or at least put on some sort of probation for her bullshit. Sure, I sympathized with Claire at first, because she was the victim of an armed bank robbery, which wasn’t her fault, but I completely lost my sympathy for her when she not only got involved, wholesale, in a romance with Doug, but refused to sever all contacts with him even after she learned through Agt. Frawley who Doug MacRay really was, and what he was up to.. Unlike most people, who are sympathetic with Ben Affleck’s character in that film, and with Claire, I am not.
Why should I be sympathetic to either Doug or Claire? The idea that Doug MacRay wanted to change and redeem himself through Claire is utter bullshit, especially after he engaged in an act of vigilantism by taking the law into his own hands, going back to Charlestown, and gunning down Rusty and Fergie just because they threatened Doug’s ladygirl Claire with physical harm. Come on now! Doug MacRay’s still a criminal and he was not the decent guy he came across as when he and Claire met “by chance” in a C-Town laundromat.
Doug MacRay, like his friends and partners in crime, are not only skilled, disciplined and ruthless in their quest for quick money through parasitic behaviors such as armed robbery, and who’d unquestionably kill or seriously injure people enough to put them in the hospital if they’re considered obstacles to what they want, but Doug knows how to come across as a nice guy, when he’s really not. He may not be crazy like his best friend and righthand man, Jem, but he’s a sociopath and a person of unprovoked violence just the same. The fact that he came across as such a nice, charming guy and deceived Claire by pretending to be an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, when he’s really not, is more than disgusting…it’s part of his criminal behavior. As for Claire, the fact that she took Doug’s bait and rose to it is pathetic indeed.
If Doug had really wanted to change, imo, he would’ve turned himself and his guys in, come forward, negociated with the Feds for some protection for him and Claire, and stopped robbing banks once and for all. Doug left for Florida without Claire for two reasons:
A) Doug macRay was an armed felon and wanted fugitive who’d been on the lam from the law for quite awhile, plus he’d just killed Fergie and Rusty.
B) Doug had gotten what he really wanted out of Claire all along; a promise from her not to turn him in, which he got.
How can so many people be so naive or willfully stupid as to miss that?
Also, if Doug wanted to redeem himself, he would’ve come forward, served his time, and
after a prison term, found honest ways to raise the funding for the renovation for the C-Town hockey rink himself, instead of using Claire Keesey as a go-between. What people don’t realize is that Doug wasn’t a nice guy…even to Claire, even though most people firmly believe that. The fact that he deceived her, seduced her and made a total fool out of her was vicious. The fact that Claire acted like a poor, confused, dumb-assed adolescent and allowed herself to be manipulated, made a fool out of and taken advantage of by Doug is pitiful, but she doesn’t deserve pity, due to the fact that she helped the very guy who turned her life upside down and caused her a ton of grief in the first place escape the law.
Now that I think of it, I wouldn’t cared one iota if Doug and Claire had either ended up in jail, or been shot and thrown into the Charles or the Mystic River. An awful thing for me to say, but that’s how disgusted I am with this kind of thing.
As for Kristina, well, I don’t like her sordid lifestyle or behavior (drug and alcohol addiction, sleeping around with too many men, and the fact that she was in the business herself by helping to book hotel rooms and get costumes for Doug and his men, and being a drug mule for Fergie and Rusty), but i’ll say this: I feel kind of sorry for Krista, in a way, because she had far fewer choices than Claire; she’d grown up with Doug and Jem, who, like many other men, abused and exploited her for their own ends. Krista’s daughter, Shyne, still an infant, caught in the middle of all this shit, was innocent, and I felt sorry for her, too.
I’m so sick of people saying that what the white collar criminals (not defending them, btw) are worse than guys like Doug MacRay and his gang, because it’s unrelated, and not true.
Neither the book Prince of Thieves, on which The Town was based, or the movie, make any effort to get at causes of bank robbery and other crimes, and the circumstances under which Doug and his men had grown up under. Moreover, the movie asks the audience to sympathize with Doug MacRay and his men, as well as Claire, who acted stupidly enough to allow Doug to take advantage of her, and who became an accessory to his crimes, while considering law enforcement officials assigned to bring criminals like MacRay and company to their knees and have them locked up in penetentiaries once and for all.
Dez was a smart (he was college-educated and had a regular job) but stupid guy; he was pretty much just along for the ride, and did what he was told to do by the gang, and yet, at the same time, he seemed to be pretty much their victim, as well, if one gets the drift. Dez allowed himself to be taken for a ride, also.
At least the book fleshes out the characters and spends more time on Dez and Krista, and doesn’t focus on the viewpoint of Doug and Jem so much, plus the book takes a far less sympathetic outlook towards Doug and his men.
I also might add that The Town also normalizes the Stockholm Syndrome and its inverse, the Lima Syndrome. One doesn’t have to be in any of the helping professions (i. e. psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, etc.) to realize that, while a person who’s taken hostage and falls victim to the Stockholm Syndrome (i. e. falling in love with her captor) or the Lima Syndrome (i. e. accepting the overtures of her captor, who falls in love with her), presumably has a better chance of survival in a hostage situation, the victim, in either case, is turned into a person who is at her captor’s beck and call, is manipulated and controlled by him, and is essentially brainwashed into believing that her captor cares enough about her not to kill her, and that he’ll always treat her kindly and not abuse her. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, especially because, all too often, the victim is isolated from her friends and loved ones, and begins to blame law officials and other authorities for her troubles and turn against them rather than her captor who committed this criminal act against her in the first place.
That being said, I’d say that common sense is required, in order to at least minimize the possibility of having something like that happen to him or her; Just because one meets a charming guy or gal, doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily out for any good, particularly if one is in an area that’s known to be tough, with a violent history to it. Anybody who meets someone that they’ve never seen before, no matter where they are, or how charming they may be, should be much more careful, and not be so quick to accept dates with someone or get into things with people they don’t know that well.
Claire was a woman who used no common sense what. so. ever, and she ended up having a breakdown when it finally backfired on her. Hey…if I’d known her in real life, I’d tell her..”Hey..don’t you understand that if you play with fire, you’re going to get burned? Think about that!”
Supposed the bank manager hadn’t been as angelic-looking as Claire, or had been someone with a learning/developmental disability such as autism, Aspergers, dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, or a seizure disorder? Do you honestly believe that Doug and his men would’ve even acted the least bit charming and sympathetic towards her? I don’t think so. Doug would’ve allowed Jem to do whatever he wanted with her, and she probably would’ve been gang-raped or “offed” by Doug and his posse of armed criminals. Don’t kid yourselves, guys!
Doug, contrary to how he came across to Claire, wasn’t a nice guy, even to her. He was playing her, and anybody who thinks that Doug and his men wouldn’t have killed her if she’d resisted and refused to comply with them is just kidding themselves.
Sorry, folks, but I can’t bring myself to like this film, except for the very beginning, with the aerial/ground shots of Boston’s Charlestown section, and the opening bank heist. After that, The Town went from being okay to being god-awful..in a matter of minutes!.
The dumbing down of America and the rest of the world continues unabated! The fact that so many people not only here in the United States, but worldwide, would fall for this piece of trash that passes for a movie is beyond belief. What’s even more disgusting is the fact that the criminals (i. e. Doug MacRay and his posse of bandits) are not only made into heroes, and considered sympathetic characters, but the fact that most people seem to miss the fact that it was Doug MacRay and his men who turned Claire’s life upside down, terrorized her, and tore her life apart in the first place. What people don’t seem to realize is that Claire was (willfully) stupid to keep contact with an armed felon, thief, thug and murderer like Doug MacRay even after learning who he was and what he was really up to, and, moreover, enabling Doug to become a fugitive from justice and the law.
Well, Ben Affleck is a very overated actor, and \"The Town\" is an overrated, overhyped movie with a stupidly implausible story, imho. Hey…do you really believe that the thuggish leader of a band of professional thieves who\’ve robbed, assaulted and killed people in order to get what they want, who has a heart of gold which is stolen by the princess-like bank manager exists in real life? Do you really think that Doug and his men, in real life, wouldn\’t have gang-raped and offed Claire just to shut her up because she\’s a witness? Unlike you, I\’m sure that would\’ve happened.