Movie Review: The Town

The Town (2010) 

Directed by Ben Affleck

Written by Peter Craig, Ben Affleck

Starring Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Blake Lively, Chris Cooper

Release Date September 17th, 2010 

Published September 16th, 2010 

Ben Affleck has spent the past decade, give or take, getting a hard time for his choice of friends, relationships and films. Since his break out success, and Oscar win, for “Good Will Hunting,” the knives have been out for the Boston native. At times it's been deserved, “Armageddon” and “Gigli” are terrible films, oftentimes it has not been deserved, his personal life is none of our business and “Jersey Girl” was unfairly maligned by those attacking 'Bennifer.'

Though he may deny it, the digs did get to Affleck in the mid 2000's and it drove him away from Hollywood for a time. Back in Boston he got the nerve to go behind the camera and the result was the highly compelling crime drama “Gone Baby Gone” starring his little brother Casey. Growing bolder from that success, Affleck is back in front and behind the camera for his latest effort, another gritty crime drama, “The Town.”

In “The Town” Ben Affleck stars as Doug MacRay a life long resident of the crime riddled neighborhood of Charlestown. Doug was born into crime and as a grown up he has taken up the family business; robbing banks. With his highly efficient, professional crew, including his best friend Jem (Jeremy Renner), Doug plots highly detailed heists that leave law enforcement officials baffled.

The latest heist however has an unexpected twist. In a fit of pique over a silent alarm trigger, Jem takes the bank manager, Claire (Rebecca Hall), hostage, a first for this crew. Doug manages to convince Jem not to kill her but releasing her is a decision that will come to haunt them all.

With Jem suspicious of what Claire may have seen of the crew and wanting to go back and finish her off, Doug decides to protect his hot headed friend by tracking her himself. However, upon meeting Claire in person he is drawn to her and against all good judgment a romance develops.

As all of this happening an FBI Agent, Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) catches the bank robbery case and seeing the level of efficiency involved, he becomes even more determined to catch the bad guys. Claire is the main lead and with her direct link to Doug you can imagine the intrigue and drama. Add Jem's growing suspicions and hothead tendencies to this mix and you have a recipe for piping hot drama.

”The Town” burns with drama, tension, excitement and action. Overcoming the challenge of directing and starring, Ben Affleck dominates the screen and turns in an Oscar caliber lead performance. The romance between Affleck and Rebecca Hall is subtle, natural and would be downright sweet if we weren't aware of just how it came to be.

Affleck and Hall do a tremendous job of bringing us into their world and nearly making us forget about the rest of the plot when they are together. That feeling is brilliantly shattered in the film's most effective scene, when Jem bumps into Claire and Doug having lunch at an outdoor cafe.

Jeremy Renner and Jon Hamm are tremendous back up for Affleck and Hall in the leads. Renner's string of brilliant performances, stringing back to his stunning debut as Jeffrey Dahmer through last year's Oscar nomination for “The Hurt Locker,” continues here as he essays a hotheaded psycho who with a cool streak of mean that separates him from similar characters in other crime dramas.

Jon Hamm does something similar to Renner, taking a character that is quite familiar and giving the expectations a twist. The key to Hamm's performance is his focus on the job, being an FBI professional, right down to the clipped speech direct manner, over looking cool. Hamm is essentially the good guy, he's fighting criminals but he's not afraid of playing the heavy and letting the audience not like him even as we know from a moral standpoint we should admire him.

It’s a trick of the best crime dramas to get the audience to abandon their better judgment and come to root for the bad guys. It’s exciting to have your values challenged and live vicariously through eyes and lives of those who live outside the law. Most will never have this experience but we can all easily understand the allure of easy money and of the bad guys who do things we know we could never do.

Ben Affleck and the crew behind The Town certainly know this appeal of the bad guy and the bad deed and they cleverly manipulate that appeal to draw the audience into this criminal world as well as into the forbidden romance between Doug and Claire.

“The Town” is smart, compelling, fast paced and exceptionally well crafted. Watch out for Affleck at the Oscars as “The Town” could bring nominations for Ben in front of and behind the camera.