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.

SALT

The role of Edwin Salt, super spy, was originally given to Tom Cruise, before he decided that the part was too similar to his role in the Mission Impossible series. Instead, Cruise opted to make Knight and Day, an awful lowest common denominator action flick infested with lame CGI and smug dialogue. Knight and Day is different from Mission Impossible in one important way – it was completely void of any intelligent spark. But I digress; I’m only seeking to make the point: Salt is smarter than most popcorn fair. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have moments of stupidity, importantly, however, it seems to be having fun even when the plot becomes seriously convoluted and forced.

So, Edwin became an Evelyn and Cruise became Jolie. Through a series of action flicks, comprising the Tomb Raider movies, Mr and Mrs Smith and Wanted, Jolie has positioned herself as a bankable action star. Unfortunately, none of the above movies are much good, despite her credible performances. She throws herself into these roles with giddy aplomb and as a result is capable of crafting a believable heroine at odds with her more vulnerable roles in A Mighty Heart or Changeling. Promotional material for Salt also suggests that Angelina does a great deal of her own stunts, but I wonder about the extent to which this is true. Jolie is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars and as a result she’s too valuable to risk.

This film begins really strong. CIA agent Evelyn Salt is imprisoned in North Korea where she is brutally tortured as her captors seek to discover her true identity. But, this girl is damn good at maintaining a lie. Her future husband, an arachnologist with access to North Korea (yes, really and with a job like that you know it’s going to be relevant at some point later in the film) discovers Salt’s location and forces the CIA into action. Two years later, Salt has been freed, is happily married and content in her job as a CIA agent. This is until a routine interrogation with a Russian defector, Orlov, who reveals details regarding ‘Day X’. Orlov tells Salt about a group of Russians born agents, trained from birth to spring into action on Day X and bring about the destruction of the United States. These agents would have extensive plastic surgery to appear American, would be trained to speak and act American and would earn high profile jobs in the US government, so when the time came they would be in a position to cause a great deal of damage. The kicker is this: Orlov claims, in front of everybody watching, that Salt is one of the Day X agents.

The identity of Salt is the driving force of the film – who is she and is she a force for good or evil? Fearing for her husband’s life she evades the CIA and goes rogue. Her buddy in the CIA, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) seeks to catch Salt so that they can establish the truth together and clear her name (but if you’ve seen a Liev Schreiber performance before, it’s quite clear what’s going to happen and where his real motivations lie). Then there’s Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor, also in a role he’s done many times before) who chases Salt relentlessly, believing that she represents a genuine threat to the United States. It’s disappointing that no time is given to developing Peabody’s character, who is so flat and uninteresting that he might as well not exist. This disappointment is magnified because we know Ejiofor is an extremely talented actor who can give a dignity to these kinds of roles if given a chance (as he did as ‘The Operative’ in Josh Whedon’s Serenity).

So there are a couple of missed opportunities. Jolie, on the other hand makes the most of her role. There’s a great sequence early on in the film as she escapes the CIA by jumping from moving to truck to moving truck. Moment's like this get the blood pumping and aid the progression of the film. The action manages to remain compulsive even as the plot falls apart towards the end of the film. By keeping Salt’s identity secret from the audience until near the end of the film, it is impossible to keep track of her motivations and her actions become more and more nonsensical. It’s also fun to note that despite living in America all their lives and having been trained from birth to speak and act American, all the Day X agents, speak in perfect Russian accents when they come out of hiding. Yes, the film is smarter than most popcorn fair, but it can also be pretty stupid too. Its primary plot mechanism is designed to keep the audience guessing at all times. It works too, but by sticking with it for so long a number of gaping plot holes form. By the end of the film we have reached levels of absurdity approaching those present during Knight and Day. We do however, have the preceding 75 minutes which are entertaining, satisfying and driven by a convincing lead performance.