The Town Three stars Rated: 14A
Ben Affleck has managed to sidestep the curse that can dog a sophomore directing effort with The Town, which is in many ways a superior movie to 2007’s Gone Baby Gone.
He’s faced more than a few career difficulties (Gigli and Pear Harbor to name two) but The Town shows Gone Baby Gone was no fluke and Affleck has considerable talents working both sides of the camera.
This time out, the story is better and more believable, without the silliness of Gone Baby Gone. Affleck has gone back to Beantown (he’s getting to be Woody Allen-like in his devotion to one city) for this look at the tight-knit Boston neighbourhood of Charlestown, where being in the family business includes a rap sheet and a fondness for earning money the easy way.
Or is it? The gang of coolly violent robbers led by Affleck’s smarter-than-average Doug MacRay and his best pal Jem (a tightly wound Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker) plan heists with such attention to detail, right down to the head-covering Halloween masks they wear, you can’t help but wonder what they’d be able to accomplish working the other side of the law.
Doug must be thinking the same thing, somewhere in the back of his mind. An on-the-fly decision by the gang to take a bank manager named Claire hostage during a bungled robbery means they now need to keep an eye on her from afar to make sure she doesn’t talk. Doug volunteers, but his keeping watch turns into a chance meeting, which soon becomes something much more.
British actress Rebecca Hall, who was so compelling in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is credible as Claire, a young woman who hopes to make inroads onto the Charlestown community, despite being dismissed as an outsider. Perhaps Doug is the one to help her fit in, although his jumpy and aggressive pal Jem seems to have taken an instant dislike to her.
Doug’s struggles to keep his other life a secret — and to protect Claire — are compounded by his ex-girlfriend, Jem’s tough-as-nails younger sister, Krista. With her smeared makeup and sly ways, Blake Lively does well as the streetwise chick who has a few secrets of her own.
Affleck also co-wrote the screenplay, taken from Chuck Hogan’s Prince of Thieves. While the story is simple, the telling is satisfying thanks to a combination of action scenes, an ace car chase through narrow Charlestown streets and a first-rate cast. Pete Postlethwaite as The Florist, the crass Irish gangster who has controlled the Town’s family businesses since Doug’s dad was still out on the street, is as menacing and mesmerizing as a hooded cobra.
Only Jon Hamm (Mad Men) doesn’t fit in, playing the FBI agent who is determined to get enough evidence to bring down the gang members, whom he’s been dogging for ages. The fault isn’t with Hamm’s performance, but with his success playing a 1960s ad kingpin in the series. He may have left the Brylcreem and grey suits behind, but it’s hard to see anybody but Don Draper chasing down the Town boys.
Doug’s choices about leaving his criminal life test his relationship with Claire and endanger both of them, even as the gang plans a final job that unspools with tension and violence.
Affleck does well in crafting The Town, using aerial shots of the bridge leading into and out of Charlestown to heighten the sense that this is a place apart, a separate country, from Boston. He’s also done an admirable job of making an unsavoury character not only likeable, but a devil worthy of our sympathy.
Linda Barnard is a syndicated Toronto Star movie critic.