Intriguing tale of crime and conflicting loyalties

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2011)

Better than your average caper movie, "The Town" focuses on a group of four career criminals (led by Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner, who is quickly becoming a favorite of mine) from Charlestown in Boston. They're smart and good at what they do—until Ben Affleck's character falls for the bank manager they rob. Wanting to leave his criminal past behind him, he appeals to his cohorts, who refuse to let him get away before pulling off one last job. Commitment to friends becomes compromised with his developing love for the bank manager, and the authorities, in the form of Jon Hamm as an FBI agent and the always under-appreciated Titus Welliver as a Boston PD detective, begin closing in. The story is smart and well-developed, and the action sequences are explosive and exciting. Not quite sure this movie is Oscar material, as some have argued, but it certainly affirms that Affleck has matured considerably as an actor and a director.