The Town Review

Ben Affleck proves with The Town that the brilliance of Gone Baby Gone was not a fluke. This is a smart director with a strong voice that is here to stay.

Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) is the brains behind a gang of bank robbers operating in Boston. His closest friend, James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), works the crew as muscle and his right hand man. During a job, Coughlin takes things too far and takes the bank manager hostage. This is Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) and now she may be a problem. Doug takes on the responsibility to follow her and make sure that she doesn’t know anything. Now, it is Doug’s turn to take it too far. Doug talks with Claire and asks her out for a drink. He gets the information he needs to put them in the clear but decides to keep seeing her. Soon thereafter, he falls for her.

During this time, FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) is pursuing Doug and his crew. And he is closing in. It isn’t long before Doug finds himself caught between his old life with his crew and the new life he wants with Claire.

The first thing that has to be said about the film is its sense of place is excellent. It helps to have a cinematographer as gifted as Robert Elswit shooting it, but Affleck, having grown up in Boston, knows this town. You can feel the elegance of the Harvard area restaurants he eats at with Claire and practically choke on the grime of Charlestown. When an elaborate chase scene occurs during one of the crew’s heists, Affleck captures the claustrophobia of Boston’s streets. This is a living, breathing world. And with it comes harsh reality.

The action in this movie is visceral. It’s like a gut punch when guns are fired. During a car chase I found myself gripping on to my seat for fear that if the driver turned too fast, I would be thrown from it. Affleck does something very important with his action: he sets up a sense of place so that the audience has a sense of where everyone is and where everything is taking place. By clearly painting the world, he makes the action much more immersive and gripping. This sounds simple but many directors forget to do something this basic.

Affleck can shoot action but he can also put together a scene. The performances in his films can be off the chart good (see Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone for evidence). In The Town, Affleck places himself at the center of the story and handles the weight rather well. You can see the acquiescence to his life of crime in the way he carries himself and way he looks at the world around him. This is a man that didn’t want to end up here but, now that he has, accepts it. That is until Claire enters, played here with painful honesty and vulnerability by Rebecca Hall. Renner is great as the most unhinged of the group, constantly carrying a gun in the back of his pants – a ticking time bomb of a man.

Also, if you are like me and always wondered what it would be like to see Jon Hamm throwing junkies through glass tables and run through the street firing a shotgun, this is the movie for you.

The film does have its struggles. Claire and Doug’s relationship is interesting. They are two rather broken people. And in many ways Doug is responsible for breaking both of them. But their relationship isn’t given the time it needs to develop properly. It rushes along with both of them throwing out very personal information with little to no provocation to do so. That said, I will have a hard time looking at sunny days the same way again.

Doug’s turn also feels a little rushed. There comes a point in the film where a lot of information about him is just sort of thrown at the audience so that we can understand why he feels regret and why he would want to make a change in his life. His resolution is built up to be one of the bigger sequences of the movie but ultimately lacks any real tension. It isn’t handled as clumsily as it could have been but not as well as it could have either.

These moments being rushed seems to be a consequence of trying to move the pace along. It is a heist movie after all. Affleck may aspire to make it more than that but that is when the film is at its best. The heists are thrilling to watch and executed damn near perfectly. Occasionally there are some tonal issues, with humorous moments being played too much for laughs.

Affleck puts together a film that is thrilling and fun. He reaches for more than that. At times he succeeds. At times he doesn’t. But overall, he has made an incredibly solid film that a director far more experienced than he would have been proud to have made. He has demonstrated considerable skill with this film, showing that he can direct compelling dramatic and action scenes and that he can create atmosphere. If he keeps going like this, Ben Affleck could be to Boston what Martin Scorsese has been to New York. Because he knows this town.