Heat it is not!

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2011)

Ben Affleck with Irish accent - it is tormenting to watch. He tries so hard, but he can't do it. He should have stuck with directing.
Second, bits and pieces of this movie remind me of the epic DeNiro/Pacino movie, "Heat". That movie remains consistent throughout, and characters remain true to themselves and are brilliant on top of that.
Here, characters start out OK, but then they forget who they are supposed to be. The character that least remains true to himself is Ben Afflec himself.
Jeremey Renner's character, James Coughlin is the BEST and is consistent and never wanders for a moment. Same could be said about character Slaine, although it is not as prominent as other characters.
Ben Afflec falling madly in love with a cliché good-girl and putting all his BROTHERS at risk, simply doesn't jive. No self-respecting bad-guy/bank-robber would allow that to happen.
A line from heat is that you can't let yourself get attached to anyone or anything that you can't walk away from. Now that is how you maintain your edge.
Not saying it is not OK for Ben Afflec's character to be weak, but it is simply not consistent. When you are able to take people out at moments notice, you are supposed to operate at different plane, then normal good guys.
Why does Afflec's character want to be a good guy so desperately? Why not just turn yourself in? Also, even when he discloses to the girl he is a bank robber, she is so madly in love with him, that she is OK, with the man who kidnapped her and threatened to take her life? Is that Stockholm syndrome on roids? In Heat, DeNiro's character never admits to the girl what he does, and remains consistent.
Also, character played by Blake Lively is inconsistent. It didn't appear her and Ben Afflec's character had strong relationship and it was mostly about sex, but as soon as she hears about Diamond Necklace he has given to another girl, she gives away supposedly her son's father, her brother and her friends out of anger? No way. If a character that is supposed to be cool with a man being bank-robber, then despite cheating or not, she won't resort to throw her own brother and her child's father to FBI.
Problem is that Ben Afflec got hung up on a TYPICAL Hollywood cliché, "bad guy wants out". So he tried hard, ignoring natural instincts of characters to form the story where the guy just wants out at all cost, because he is in love with cliché good girl, who plants community gardens.
In real life, how many successful bad guys want out, specially when they are doing great? Who wants to risk prison, and throw their best buddies in jail for a woman? Better story and more consistent story would have been if the girl he fell in love with, comes to realize who he really is and she turns the whole crew in, which she tried later on as well, and not Blake Lively's character. Afflec's character being true to himself, should have realized he is in fact bad guy, and should have gone after that girl to revenge the death of his friends due to her and taken out the FBI guy and her and then we would have a proper ending and a better movie.