THE TOWN

First up, some congratulations must be offered to Mr. Affleck for finding this year's most boring film title and then having the tenacity to stick with it. Ben Affleck’s latest directorial effort was originally shipped to theatres under the code name ‘Criminal Intent’. Now that’s a pretty bad name, but it’s got nothing on The Town - a real snooze-fest of a title that fails to provoke any feeling whatsoever. Given The Town’s popularity, it’s possible that we’ll see an onslaught of similarly adventurous movie titles – perhaps ‘The Field’ or ‘The Quarry’ or even ‘The House’ (even in the process of throwing these titles out there I am reminded that there are films in existence with names such as The River, The Village and The Cottage). The Town is a movie that deserves a better title. It’s a couple of notches above your average heist movie and will provide further positive momentum for Ben Affleck’s Hollywood reappraisal.

Affleck’s stock fell with a series of films including Daredevil, Gigli, Paycheck and Jersey Girl - a period of time where every film choice represented another nomination for The Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor. His rehabilitation began with a critically lauded performance in Hollywoodland before Affleck made a wise decision to get behind the camera and start directing. His first directorial effort was the good but not without its problems Gone Baby Gone where he proved that he had a good directorial eye and was more than capable of bringing the Boston streets to life. His follow-up directorial endeavour is The Town, so called because it is a non-judgemental rendering of Boston’s bank-robbery capital ‘Charlestown’ and the folks that make their lives there.

The film echoes another revered, august Boston heist-flick, The Friend’s of Eddie Coyle in its opening heist sequence, which also does a good job setting the mood. Charged without being explosive, fast-paced, smartly edited it also manages to tell us everything we need to know about all its primary characters. Doug MacRay (Affleck) the crew’s leader is a tough and experienced criminal who is disheartened by the path of his life. James “Jem” Coughlin (Jeremy Remmer) on the other hand is a ruthless career-criminal whose fate has ‘hardened’ – removed his sense of mercy and turned him into a volatile monster, keen only to avoid being ‘jammed up’. Their Heist is derailed by Bank Manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) who manages to set off the silent alarm using the nub of her toe. Fleeing from the cops, Doug and Jem take Claire hostage and make their getaway. It is here that Affleck injects a little visual poetry into what is otherwise a workaday thriller: we see a blindfolded Hall stumble her way down a beach, her hair blowing in the wind, told as she is to ‘walk until you feel the water on your toes”.

When they find out that Claire is a Charlestown local the MacRay crew is left paralysed with the fear that they may run into each other once more and that she may be able to identify them to the FBI. Jem, all distorted temperament offers to deal with things his way, but Doug wants to try and settle things without violence. He seeks her out in a Laundromat, charms her and before long the two are lovers. Soon enough, Doug wants nothing more than to get away from Charlestown and start a new life with Claire, but his ties to his old life style hold him back at every turn.

There has been something of a tendency to overstate the extent to which The Town is a success. If anything it’s about 20 minutes too long and the story never really pulls itself above your general Heist-movie fare. FBI Agent Frawley (Mad Men’s Jon Hamm) is there only to push the plot forward (mostly through the use of clichéd dialogue) and to represent an outside threat to MacRay’s crew. Thankfully, Affleck, Remmer and Hall do get an opportunity to flex their acting chops by playing trapped, conflicted and interesting characters. The scene that I felt worked best in the context of the film is the only scene in the film to include all three actors working with each other face-to-face. Although the MacRay crew wore masks during the bank-robbery, Claire was able to discern the ‘fighting-Irish’ tattoo on the back of Jem’s neck. When Jem discovers that Doug and Claire are seeing each other he joins them for lunch in order to put the spooks into Doug. It’s the viewer who is left reeling though, as he tries desperately to influence the proceedings and ensure that Jem doesn’t present Claire with a chance to catch sight of his tattoo. The combination of being more knowledgable than the characters on screen, yet so powerless can have quite the effect on a viewer.

It's in moments like this where the film works best. As it is however, there’s a little too much expository dialogue and moments where the film begins to sag (Affleck’s character background – the whole thing with his parents, began to drag for me). There are three main action sequences which provide the film with a certain degree of impetus and keep the audience interested in the proceedings. It is Affleck’s camerawork in combination with an editor who gives his images a chance to settle before cutting that provides the action with a sense of lasting realism (which has in turn caused some critics to recall the street shootouts in Heat). So there it is. Despite The Town’s uneven nature, it’s easy to see why critics are eating this stuff up – it’s significantly better than much of this summer’s more action-packed cinematic offerings, be it Salt, Knight & Day or Predators. When it works, The Town is undeniably great, but I was left with the feeling that there is better to come from Affleck whose ability as an actor seems to improve year by year and his ability behind the camera had left us a lot to be excited about.