A Sunny Day To Die For

Rating: 8/10 (26 November 2010)

Chuck Hogan's novel "The Prince of Thieves" (not too be confused with Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves) is converted to a screen play by Ben Affleck, Peter Craig, & Aaron Stockard. Affleck Directs & stars as Doug MacRay the Prince. Rebecca Hall carries the female co-star role well, & Jon Hamm is the FBI agent on MacRay's trail.
Hogan's novel is the fictional story of 4 Irish-American Brothers who are lifelong friends in the Boston area & of Doug, their leader, falling for the manager of one of the banks they rob. The screen adaption mentions some of the men being Irish but only emphasizes one of them as having a close relationship to Doug. It has a couple of men in a flower shop who order Doug around, & who bossed his father. The father is in prison & Doug's mother dead.
In the novel, Adam Frawley, the FBI agent is in love with Claire Keesey (Hall) the bank manager too. This seems to be missing in the movie as perhaps time constricted this story in the film weighs in at slightly over 2 hours. Regardless, the film is pretty well put together & does hit most of the other high points of the novel. Jon Hamm is the FBI agent.
This film is well constructed & a solid drama with little humor. As it lasted in theaters for a long stretch, the film has done well. No complaints from me, it is solid entertainment.