The Town

The last decade seems to have seen a flowering of crime films that are set in Boston. Mystic River, The Departed, Gone, Baby, Gone, and Shutter Island all are set in the Hub City, with the requisite "pahk ya cah in Hahvahd Yahd" accents. This "Beantown Noir" proliferation is due to a number of reasons, perhaps most due to the cinematic-ready books of Dennis Lehane, who penned the source of three of these films. But the other is Ben Affleck, who directed Gone, Baby, Gone and now returns with The Town.

I think it all started with Affleck and Matt Damon writing Good Will Hunting. While not a crime film, it was the first of the recent films that depict Boston has the hardscrabble town of broken blue-collar dreams. Once the province of New York City neighborhoods, it now seems that if you want to make a film about the beaten down men of a certain type, you go to Boston.

Affleck stars in The Town as well as directs (and co-writes the screenplay), and his character isn't much different than the one in Good Will Hunting. He is a laborer for a sand and gravel company, but the big difference is that Doug Macray is also a bank robber. We are told at the outset that a blue-collar neighborhood of Boston, Charlestown, is a hotbed of bank and armored car thieves, who learn the business at their father's knee.

The Town is a fine film, but doesn't stray much from standard structure. Affleck's character will, through the love of a good woman, come to doubt his criminal ways and want to leave the city of his birth. In doing this he will be at odds with his childhood friend and colleague, who is a violent psychopath. He will want to leave the business, but be forced into one last job that will go disastrously wrong. Though all of this is familiar, it's well done.

Each of the film's three acts feature a robbery. The first finds Affleck's crew hitting a bank wearing fright masks. I was taken out of the film a bit because it seems to me that professional bank robbers wouldn't wear masks that would severely limit peripheral vision. They take the bank manager (Rebecca Hall) as hostage, and learn that she lives in their neighborhood. Affleck, attracted to her, stalks her to see what she knows, and ends up seducing her. His buddy (Jeremy Renner) isn't so sentimental, and when he finds out that the two have become a couple he is dubious, to say the least.

Renner is a character long familiar to movie audiences, the second banana with the vicious streak. Perhaps best typified by Robert De Niro's Johnny Boy in Mean Streets, the character has its limitations, as it's easy to figure he likely won't make it out of the film alive, and there will be a continual struggle between the protagonist and the character who represents the protagonist's childhood connections. But Renner does well with the character, and I loved the moment when Affleck tells Renner they are going to go hurt some people. "What car we gonna take?" Renner asks, without batting an eye.

The relationship between Affleck and Renner is complicated by Renner's sister (Blake Lively), a single young woman with drug and alcohol problems and a child. She and Affleck had a relationship, but he says the child is not his.

This is all established in the film's first third, and I found it to be solid but nothing special. It was only during the second robbery that the film kicks into a second gear. The crew, now wearing nun costumes (with much larger eye-holes) end up chased through the narrow one-way streets of Boston by the police. Affleck and his editor work magic. Car chases are so prevalent that it's something special when there's one that really grabs my attention.

The film then heads toward the inevitable big job. The local crime boss, a florist menacingly played by Pete Postlethwaite, has an insider at Fenway Park. This is sort of akin to Danny Ocean and his men hitting the Bellagio in Vegas. The use of the actual Fenway Park for this scene adds an immeasurable amount of authenticity that makes the scene thrum with electricity. It's no shock to anyone who has seen a movie before that something will go wrong, but it's a terrific climax nonetheless.

The acting by all hands is excellent. Hall is an intriguing actress to watch, and she has a difficult task,--she has to sell her love for Affleck, even after certain facts come to light. Lively, playing a character about as opposite of her role on Gossip Girl as possible, is quite good, as is Jon Hamm as an FBI agent who somehow manages to always have five-o-clock-shadow. Chris Cooper has one scene has Affleck's incarcerated father, and he knocks it over the Green Monster. My only problem was with understanding the Boston accents. To the film's credit, though, the word "wicked" is never uttered.

My grade for The Town: B+