{"id":9878,"date":"2024-12-10T23:31:54","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9878"},"modified":"2024-12-10T23:31:54","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:31:54","slug":"the-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/the-town\/","title":{"rendered":"The Town"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Town <\/strong>(2010)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros\/Action-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 154 minutes (Alternate Cut)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ben Affleck\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Peter Craig, Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Harry Gregson-Williams and David Buckley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Elswit\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 17, 2010 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, George Carroll (as \u201cSlaine\u201d), Owen Burke, Titus Welliver, Pete Postlethwaite, Chris Cooper, Dennis McLaughlin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $92.1M (US)\/$154M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not infallible. I never said I was. I keep deriding the sorry state of contemporary cinema over its reliance on tired genres- e.g. insipid rom-coms, frenetic superhero adventures, unscary horrors, etc.- and generic action-driven plots that forsake character development for CGI and noise. I hate to say it, but my heart isn\u2019t in it like it used to be. Moviegoing has become something of a hollow experience nowadays. I yearn for the days when cinema was about art rather than profit. True filmmakers are artists not manufacturers of pablum for the masses. Sadly, those are in short supply in the 21st<\/sup> century. They\u2019re not totally extinct however.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Perhaps I ought to preface my next point by naming those I consider true filmmakers, limiting myself to those still active today. It\u2019s not a long list. It consists of Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Steven Spielberg and Ben Affleck. That\u2019s right, I said Ben Affleck as in the actor who NEVER should have been cast as Batman\/Bruce Wayne. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s a particularly good actor, but he\u2019s a truly gifted director as evidenced by his sophomore effort, the riveting crime drama The Town<\/strong>. I didn\u2019t think it was possible for him to follow up his debut feature Gone Baby Gone with something equally great, but he did. It\u2019s as great as anything by Scorsese or the late Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Affleck sets his story in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, an area regarded as the bank robbery capital of the US. It contains more thieves and bank robbers than anyplace in the country, a remarkable thing when you consider it measures only one square mile. Robbery is every bit a family trade in Charlestown as law, medicine or insurance sales. People in this life don\u2019t usually leave of their own accord. In fact, they almost never do. They either go to prison or get killed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At the center of The Town<\/strong> is Doug MacRay (Affleck), a lifelong resident of Charlestown who robs banks and armored cars with lifelong friends Jem (Renner, The Hurt Locker), Gloansy (Slaine, Gone Baby Gone) and Dez (Burke, Black Mass). The movie opens with the foursome holding up a bank in a well-orchestrated robbery. All goes according to plan until a silent alarm gets tripped. After brutally beating the manager, they take assistant manager Claire (Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) hostage to facilitate their escape and release her unharmed a short time later. When they learn she too lives in Charlestown, a paranoid Jem suggests they silence her for good. Doug has a better idea. He follows her to a laundromat where they make each other\u2019s acquaintance. She, of course, has no idea who he really is. His objective is to find out what she told investigating FBI agent Frawley (Hamm, Baby Driver). He ends up falling for her which presents a new set of complications like keeping it secret from Jem.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, it doesn\u2019t take long for Frawley to zero in on Doug and his crew. He watches and waits for them to strike again. He\u2019s determined to catch them and put them away. Unfortunately for him and the feds, his targets are on to him. It becomes a battle of wits as each side tries to stay one step ahead of the other.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As you would expect, The Town<\/strong> has a few cool action set-pieces. There are three big action scenes. All are expertly staged and well executed. All possess a tangible sense of urgency. I\u2019m especially fond of the middle sequence where the guys rob an armored car dressed as nuns. It\u2019s an exciting scene on par with the centerpiece of Heat (the Michael Mann movie).<\/p>\n

\u00a0As much as I love action, it\u2019s not the only thing that makes The Town<\/strong> great. Affleck, who co-wrote the screenplay with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard, takes the time to develop his characters into complex beings rather than one-dimensional character types. His own character Doug is a perfect example. When Claire asks about his family, he tells her some vague story about them living elsewhere. The truth is his mother split when he was very young and his bank robber father (Cooper, American Beauty) is in prison for the rest of his life. We also learn he was once a promising hockey player whose career was cut short by his own misdeeds. Also, he\u2019s a recovering drug addict who has a child with his addict ex-girlfriend Kris (Lively, Gossip Girl). Claire makes him want to be a better person. Their love could be his ticket out of his life of crime. None of these details are superfluous; they\u2019re all part of Doug\u2019s psychological makeup. In the role, Affleck delivers one of his better performances. He\u2019s not as stiff as he usually is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Renner turns in a dynamic, intense performance as Jem, a loose cannon determined to avoid another stay in prison. He trusts no one outside his social circle and lashes out when he feels his existence is being threatened. He suspects something is going with his best pal Doug when he spots him with Claire on a lunch date. In a scene of palpable tension, he joins them at their table and talks away while Doug drops not-too-subtle hints that he should leave. If Claire spots the distinctive tattoo on the back of his neck, she\u2019ll know they\u2019re the robbers that left her traumatized.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hall is terrific as Claire, a basically decent person caught up in a dire situation that could very well cost the woman her freedom or her life. Lively shows surprising versatility playing against type as a slutty, drug-addicted townie clearly unfit to be a mother. The late Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father), in his final role, is scary as the local crime boss who gives Doug and his crew their orders. He\u2019s one guy you don\u2019t want to screw with. He\u2019s capable of anything.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Town<\/strong> is an incredible movie! It flawlessly blends compelling drama, rich characterization and riveting action into one cohesive whole. Affleck has a real feel for the singular rhythm of the Boston working-class neighborhood with its gritty streets, tight-knit residents, unwritten code of silence and a language all its own. It\u2019s a microcosm inhabited by people who all attended the same school, the College of Hard-Knocks. They\u2019re distrustful of outsiders (aka \u201cTunies\u201d) and law enforcement. Affleck understands them inside and out. He gives us a close look at all of it while knowing we might not like what we see.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It says a lot about any director, especially one so young, that he can get such outstanding across-the-board performances from a large cast. In fact, Affleck does everything right with The Town<\/strong>. Based on the novel Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, it\u2019s one of those movies that never get boring even when the characters are just talking. A strong current of tension runs consistently throughout. Sure, it\u2019s long, especially the \u201cAlternate Version\u201d which runs about 30 minutes longer than the theatrical version. There are many added and alternate scenes, but the most notable difference is the ending. I won\u2019t say how, but it changes the whole experience. Even with the extra running time, the pacing is never off. It runs as smoothly as vintage whiskey goes down. I can say without hesitation that The Town<\/strong> is one of the best American films of the past decade.\"\"<\/p>\n

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The Town (2010)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros\/Action-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 154 minutes (Alternate Cut)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ben Affleck\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Peter Craig, Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Harry Gregson-Williams and David Buckley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Elswit\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 17, 2010 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Town-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9878"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10189,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9878\/revisions\/10189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}