Affleck goes to Town and finds his career

Rating: 8/10 (20 September 2010)

Ben Affleck continues to resurrect his career with an excellent film that combines working class angst, action-packed heist scenes and real opportunities for his cast to shine in their roles.
Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) is a full grown child of Charlestown, a roughneck white enclave of Boston where armed robbery is a profession handed down from father to son. With a long absent mother, imprisoned father and a past of discarded glory, Doug now heads up a four man crew than includes his childhood friend Jim Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), a more ruthless and violent criminal than Doug ever wants to be.
The crew successfully robs a bank, taking assistant manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage as they escape. But when they discover that Claire lives in Charleston, Jim and the others fear she'll lead the cops to them. Doug agrees to check her out to see if there's any danger and winds up falling in love with her. He's inspired to give up a life of crime and get away from Charlestown, but Doug finds himself caught between the overly-caffeinated FBI agent (Jon Hamm) trying to bring him to justice and the demands of a vicious Charlestown crime boss (Pete Postlethwaite) who insists that Doug and his crew perform one last spectacular robbery.
With The Town, Affleck again proves that he has little in common with the flashy and hyper-stylized storytelling of today's Hollywood, relying instead on effective but unadorned direction that emphasizes the performance of his actors. All of the main characters carry along some very dramatic moments in the film and Chris Cooper as Doug's father and Blake Lively as Jim Coughlin's sister and Doug's longtime sort-of girlfriend are quite affecting in smaller roles. By giving these characters and actors something to do other than run around and shoot stuff, Affleck provides a comfortable weight and sense of substance to the proceedings.
The Town also features two outstanding action sequences, a blunt but very precise sense of humor and nicely balances the demands of heist movie excitement with the more emotional tale of a man caught between what he's always known and what he could never admit he wanted.
Even with his sometimes questionable career and personal choices, I'm not exactly sure why Affleck ended up the Stallone to Matt Damon's Schwarzenegger. Whatever put him on this road, it's brought him to the point where he could become one of the best filmmakers of his era. Let's just hope he stays far, far away from Jennifer Lopez.