Very good, but with a touch of moral awkwardness

Rating: 8/10 (30 September 2010)

The Town as a character-based crime thriller starring and directed by Ben Affleck.
Doug's gang take a hostage during a Boston bank robbery. Although they release her, Doug's psycho fellow gang member Jem (whose family took Doug in as a boy when his father went to prison) wants to find her and kill her. Doug locates her, falls for her (and her for him), and the inevitable complications follow.
The story is simple, but there is a lot of it and it is engaging throughout. There are a number of very effective action-based heist set pieces. But it is the continually developing relationships between the principals which drives this film. Affleck again shows himself to be a keen judge of projects and a first rate director.
The cast are all excellent, with Jeremy Renner standing out as a scarily believable loose cannon.
My only reservation concerns Affleck's character and the ending. Doug is a violent bank robber who, at one point, has no problem in cold bloodedly executing someone. Yet he is painted as a sympathetic character throughout, the guy the audience is intended to root for. I suppose there is an argument to suggest that the promise of redemption is a praiseworthy basis on which to end a movie, but I felt that the way the film ended was at odds with what had come before.
But for all that, this is a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours.