Well, give Affleck some points for trying.

Rating: 5/10 (30 April 2011)

Quite simply, this was almost a great movie. It had a lot of potential. Not to say that The Town is a bad movie necessarily--it just doesn't live up to its hype.
It wasn't all terrible. The acting was superb, with the performances verging on brilliant. Renner really deserved his Oscar nomination. All of the characters were truly believable. Also, the cinematography was excellent. Visually, it was impressive.
Unfortunately, the murky plot line that stole ideas from every other bank heist movie known to man made it nearly impossible to fully appreciate the characters. Not to mention that this movie was way, way too long, which didn't help me follow the plot at all. (I started getting bored enough to tally the f-bombs. There were over 200. I have no problem with profanity and I use it myself, but it's hard to take people seriously when they constantly use the f-word instead of adjectives and nouns) There was simply too much they were trying to fit into the movie. It seemed very "busy." They could have focused on one romantic relationship instead of the two and it would have been much easier to follow the heist part of the story.
On that note, I thought that Blake Lively's character (while surprisingly well-performed) was completely extraneous. Granted, she might have been really important and I missed it--but even then I could blame that on the length problem I mentioned earlier.
This was a movie I really, really, wanted to enjoy. It looked great and got rave reviews. But I couldn't help but feel disappointed by it. I didn't hate it, because I didn't really have a reason to. But I didn't love it either. I found it to be a mediocre, room-temperature drama that could have been amazing.