Review of The Town
Review of The Town
The Town
2010 | Ben Affleck | Rebecca Hall | Jon Hamm | Jeremy Renner | Blake Lively | Slaine | Owen Burke |
The Town is a riveting crime drama with deep sense of location. Charlestown, Massachusetts leads the world in kidnappings, car jackings, and armed robberies, and it's where the drama in The Town unfolds.
Directed by Ben Affleck, The Town is the tale of four childhood friends bound together by their generations-long history of armed robbery. Doug (Affleck), Jem (Renner), Gloansy (Slaine), and Dez (Burke) rob a bank in Cambridge and take bank manager Claire (Hall) hostage. Just as you get sucked into the drama and excitement of a gritty heist film like Oceans on meth, the film juts into another direction.
After releasing Claire shaken but unharmed, Doug begins a relationship with her. The relationship is initiated because Claire also lives in The Town and the guys now have to make sure she can't identify them. As these things tend to happen, Doug falls in love with Claire and has big dreams of leaving The Town and starting a new life with her.
The relationship between the trapped Doug and tortured Claire gives this film an emotional vulnerability which I wasn't expecting. The relationship between Doug and Jem is close, and as is true with most familial relationships, rife with tension.
Ready to leave The Town with Claire and never look back, Doug is tapped by his boss Fergie (Postlethwaite) to do another heist. He promptly refuses the job until Fergie informs him that it was the drugs he supplied that lead to the suicide of Doug's mother. Shocked because he was lead to believe that she left him, Doug reluctantly agrees to the heist after Fergie threatens the lovely Claire.
The tension builds as Doug and Jem enter Fenway dressed as cops and ready to steal a small fortune. Unfortunately the tenacious Agent Frawley (Hamm) of the FBI has been watching Doug, Jem and the rest of the crew and they have Fenway surrounded. The battle lines have been drawn and bullets fly between the thieves and the cops, leaving only one man standing on the side of evil.
With the only family he's ever known gone, Doug seeks revenge against Fergie and attempts to escape with Claire. The interference by the authorities have cost Doug his last chance at happiness, but rather than run with his newfound riches, he leaves the money along with a note for his true love.
Maybe its the gritty yet totally Americana setting of Charlestown, Massachusetts from which The Town derives its emotional depth, or maybe its a true testament to the directing ability of Ben Affleck. Whatever the culprit, The Town left me happy that Doug was able to find some semblance of peace after escaping from the seemingly inescapable, yet sad that after a life of loss he was unable to escape with Claire.
The Town is another successful Boston crime drama, but you shouldn't hold that against it. Just like Gone Baby Gone, The Town provides a more realistic and fatalistic look at the criminal underworld we all try to avoid. People make bad decisions and often pay the ultimate price, leaving behind friends, enemies and frenemies alike. Affleck has found his voice in a place many Hollywood stars try to forget: Home.
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