Ghost Town - missing solid central character

Rating: 5/10 (4 February 2011)

Although tensely made and full of explodey goodness, Ben Affleck's The Town suffers from a knack of reaching into the cliché sack a few too many times. It also suffers from being directed by Ben Affleck, who surrounds himself here with people who can act circles around him, making him – as the central character – look really one dimensional. It's as if Carrot Top made a movie with Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Ralphe Fiennes, and Greta Garbo.
Affleck plays a bank robber named Doug (ha! a thug named Doug!). A rather successful bank robber, at that. (It's noted before the titles that that the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown is notorious for turning out scads of bank robbers.) During a holdup, Affleck's masked gang temporarily takes bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall) hostage; believing her to be a loose end who might be able to identify them, Doug trails Claire and meets cute with her, hiding his secret. Concurrently, an intrepid FBI agent – no other kind in moviedom – played by Jon Hamm is closing in.
Among Doug's gang is Jem (Jeremy Renner), a loose cannon who enjoys the thrill and violent nature of their escapades and who spent a nine-year hitch in prison, so you know he's tough as can be. While Doug is portrayed as thoughtful, careful, and caring, Jem is the foul-mouthed jerk who supposedly shorter on brains than Doug. Jem immediately questions the wisdom of dating their former hostage; if he had his druthers, he'd just kill Claire and be done with it. But that would go against the gang's mantra of not killing people, so Doug gets to keep seeing Claire. You know, to find out what she knows. Or if she's talked to the feds.
The movie asks us to believe two conflicting things about Doug: that he's amoral (he is a bank robber, after all) and yet moral (i.e., cares for Claire, cares for his buddy Jem, cares for Jem's sister Krista, cares for almost everyone. He's sort of a sensitive Clyde Barrow. Affleck's not a terrible actor, but it's tough to really buy into him in this role. He has the accent down (big surprise there), but he seems to equate speaking softly and looking pensive with a multilayered performance.
Another problem is Claire herself. Seems like a nice person, although she falls for Doug pretty quickly (they meet in a laundromat shortly after the robbery). And although she's pretty upset when she eventually learns the truth about Doug, she still gives him a chance. Why she would do this is anyone's guess. If they'd been together years, it still wouldn't make much sense. He's a bank robber, not Robin Hood. He's not a good guy.
The movie is fast paced, so these plot problems aren't really that big of a deal. By the way, while Dougie is trying to get in good with little miss Claire, he's still robbing banks, so of course you can see the standard "this is my last job" deal coming from a mile away. Doug's group gets its jobs from The Florist, played by Pete Postlethwait in his final role; he gives them all the intel they need, and they pull off the job. It's a working system, so why break it? I just think we'd have a little more sympathy for Doug if, say, he had to rob banks in order to pay the mortgage in a terrible economy, or he had a wife and two kids with a third on the way and his wife was dying of some lung disease, like in Brooklyn's Finest. You know, a fairly good guy forced to do bad because of circumstances. But that is not the case here. There's no reason for us to like Doug, and so he's a pretty unlikeable person. Sure, he treats Claire well. Except when he lies to her. Best line: "I'll never lie to you again!" That's right, trust the nice bank robber. Renner (nominated for an Oscar), Postlethwait, Hall, and even young, lovely Blake Lively (as Krista) completely outshine Affleck, making him look befuddled most of the time, as if he can just about put things together but can't quite get there.
And final odd question: are there no razors in Charlestown? Everyone has three-day old growth. It doesn't make them look tough. It doesn't make them look like they've been pulling all nighters to get the job done. It just makes them look like hobos.