Features > Movie Reviews > The Town…

At any rate, for his second film as director, and his third screenwriting credit, Ben Affleck has returned to his hometown, a burg his heroes always seem desperate to get away from.

More specifically, here, we’re talking about Charlestown, a predominantly blue collar suburb that, if the movie is to be believed, is home to the highest proportion of bank robbers and armoured car hijackers in the world. (Where do you dig up a statistic like that?)

Doug (Affleck) is one of their number, albeit smarter than his buddies and the de facto leader. They certainly seem to know their business in the film’s crisply edited opening, a bank job in which the masked crooks calmly microwave the security surveillance tapes and bleach down every surface before they make their getaway. Only one hitch: the hot-headed Jim (Jeremy Renner, from The Hurt Locker) impetuously brings along a hostage, Claire (Rebecca Hall). They ditch her without incident, but then they realize she’s a neighbour – she lives just a couple of blocks down the street. Is she a threat? Doug steps up to check her out.

No prizes for guessing he and Claire become an item, which doesn’t go down well with Jim (the others barely get a word in), and which might seem strange to the cops, what with his dubious associates and her working at the bank and all.

Like Gone, Baby, Gone, The Town is planted deep in its environment. As one character observes, it’s “authenticious”.   Unlike Dennis Lehane’s clever yarn, Chuck Hogan’s novel (originally published as Prince of Thieves) is pretty straightforward. There are no big twists here, and the situation is not particularly original, but there is suspense as FBI agent Frawley (John Hamm from Mad Men) zeroes in on Doug and his gang, and the climax – the perennial “one last job” – is played out on a satisfyingly grand stage.

But Affleck’s chief interest is in the romance: Claire is an outsider, and obviously middle class. Doug sees in her a way to escape the dog-eat-dog lifestyle he’s known since childhood… And what does she see in him? Someone who is sensitive to the trauma she has just experienced, and who seems to know the ropes when it comes to dealing with law enforcement (he credits his knowledge to CSI and Bones).

Affleck, it must be said, is not working class, he’s from the neighbouring town of Cambridge (home to Harvard), and it’s a bit of a stretch to credit that Doug and the volatile Jim grew up together. But the scenes between Affleck and Rebecca Hall have a nice, easy flow and humour – you buy them as a potential couple, and it’s good to see a thriller that’s not in too much of a hurry to shortchange the character scenes. Among the supporting cast, Blake Lively impresses as Jim’s sister, Doug’s sometime girlfriend, and Pete Postlethwaite turns off the charm as a vicious gangster known only as “the florist”.

In short, The Town may not be the most original movie on the block, but if you like thrillers that feel grounded and real, this one has been crafted inside and out.