The Town is a mature and intelligent thriller, layered with subtext relating to crime cultures developed and extended through family ties

Rating: 9/10 (1 November 2010)

In one Boston neighbourhood, Charlestown, there are more bank robberies committed than any other area. We are told this is because of the legacies of crime forged between fathers and sons, as crime cultures are passed down from one generation to another. Lowly crim Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) is part of a professional bank robbing gang. He and his men are assigned jobs through a thug named Fergus (Pete Postlethwaite), who runs a flower shop as a front for his operations. One of the key members of Doug's group is psychopath James (Jeremy Renner) whose sister Krista (Blake Lively) might also be carrying Doug's child. During a bank robbery, complete with skeleton masks on their faces, the gang take a bank manager in Claire (Rebecca Hall) hostage in case she saw anything but then free her without harm. To keep tabs on who she is contacting Doug follows her and then asks her out as she has not seen his face. He discovers that she is in contact with the FBI and that honest cop Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) is hot on the gangs' heels. Doug's relationship with Claire starts to sweeten, even as he tries his best to keep it a secret from the rest of the group and he starts to think about turning his life around.
This adaptation of Chuck Hogan's crime novel "Prince of Thieves" is a thrilling follow-up to Ben Affleck's directional debut Gone Baby Gone (2007). The Town, like its predecessor, has both a level of authenticity and appreciation for its sense of place. Boston is evidently a place close to Affleck's heart, not only because it is his hometown, but because of how critical the working class culture of the area is to his screenplay again. The criminals here are not just caricatures of thugs but regularly people with some resemblance of an inner life. The men have jobs from construction workers, to security experts and florists. Krista too has to balance handling the stolen money from the gang, along with raising her baby by herself. These might seem like trivial additions, but they work to build the humanity in some of these characters and why we should be interested in them. They are ordinary people, who somewhere along the line, have become misguided about what is acceptable in society. The film smartly attributes this to their upbringings and there is a very moving back-story relating to Doug's parents that compliments his need to change throughout the film. Impressively, the film works as both a social comment and a thriller too because the action scenes are intensely staged. The daytime bank robbery at the beginning of the film, not unlike the opening of The Dark Knight (2008), is a violent and viscerally charged heist that skilfully captures the spontaneity and professionalism of an armed robbery. Some of the procedures by the crims here, like pouring chemicals over the equipment to eliminate fingerprints, suggest that a lot of research went into this aspect of the film. Given the power of this sequence and several others, it is thankful that Affleck is intelligent with the film's pacing and momentum. Lesser films tend to clump action sequences together so that they become indistinguishable. Here, each set piece is deliberately placed to drive the narrative, rather than inflate it, and as such they hold a much greater and lasting impact on the audience's involvement.
The same grittiness applied to the setting is evident in the characters and performances themselves too. Ben Affleck impresses in front of the camera, as much as he does behind it. With a shaven head, a baggy tracksuit and thick Boston accent, his image as a low ranking hood is thoroughly convincing because he has entirely removed the gloss of his early career. More significantly, he contrasts his slow burning intensity and toughness with genuine sincerity. From the very opening his compassion towards Claire is visible. His performance is therefore essential in developing the idea of ordinary people on the wrong path and he succeeds entirely here with a quietly restrained human performance. Jeremy Renner too tops his performance in The Hurt Locker with a role that is even more reckless and unpredictable than he was in that film. It is quite an accomplishment that we still care about lowlifes like him in the film though. Rebecca Hall is suitably tentative as Claire and Jon Hamm, who might have been given a more superfluous role in a lesser script, is characterised interestingly with more sinister aspects to his character. The way that he works to trap people to break open his case is indicative of this.
The Town is a mature and intelligent thriller, layered with subtext relating to crime cultures developed and extended through family ties, which work to corrupt the lives of ordinary lower class people. Ideas such as these provide the film with a platform for a number of exciting and intensely staged action sequences that are purposefully placed and constructed. Adding to this are a host of top performances, including Ben Affleck in a career best role, making this very gritty crime film sophisticated entertainment.