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Ben Affleck stars as Doug MacRay in ‘bank robber who discovers his conscience’ film The Town, which he also directs. And what do we learn watching it? That friends who like guns are a serious liability.
This is a good film for Affleck, although he doesn’t seem to quite fit in with the rest of his crew, who are all hard as nails heavies from Charlestown, an area of Boston MA. As a rather pretty guy, he stands out a mile, though the plot does seem to make allowances for this, as the film shows a battle of the wills, as MacRay tries to work his way out of the criminal underworld at the same time as staying loyal to the connections he has made there.
Of course, there’s a girl who is somewhat to blame for this shift in MacRay, in the very beautiful form of bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall, Starter for Ten). MacRay and Claire meet after a heist that MacRay pulls on her bank, after which he follows her, first for the good of the operation, and then, just for his own benefit. Rebecca Hall is great in this, and is just one member of a fantastic supporting cast who make this film really great. The gun-toting friend is James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker), who seems to get some of the best action, and has some of the finest ‘face acting’ this side of Jack Nicholson. One real surprise in the cast, was the appearance of Blake Lively, Gossip Girl’s Serena van der Woodsen, who pulls off the role of messed-up rough girl without fault. She is seriously convincing, and hopefully we will be seeing more from her in this ilk in the future: we’ll have to wait and see what happens in Green Lantern! So, a supporting strong cast, rounded off by the appearance of Pete Postlethwaite as the terrifyingly named ‘Florist’. He does hard bastard very well indeed: watch out for them thorns!
The Town is definitely worth the watch, especially for fans of The Departed, Layer Cake or Crash. It has spectacular car-chases, shot from interesting angles, and with more of that first Mission Impossible feel of reality than a lot of the processed, overly-slick Hollywood stuff you find these days. There is an interesting storyline, a fabulous cast and a lot of guns. For a Boston robbers action drama, what more could you ask for?
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