Starring Ben Affleck along side a colourful array of actors; a couple of bank robbers from the projects hitting heists all over town.

Rating: Null/10 (24 May 2011)

The one thing that this film has going for it is a kind of realism that bypasses the typical glamour usually attributed to stories of this kind. That is not to say it's a bad script with nothing more to recommend it. Not a bad script at all. But not particularly stunning either.
The entire concept (which dominates the plot) is of a couple of amateur but undoubtedly talented bank robbers who go around breaking banks around the city (Boston, Charlestown). Admittedly far from an original concept, as they've been many similar plots throughout movie history.
However, what sets this concept a little apart boils down to characterization, setting and circumstances. That quality which I stated earlier provides something praiseworthy.
Unlike most bank-robber flicks, The Town has no suave, impeccable, super slick big city rebels putting the "cool" in clever robbery. Rather, the leading/supporting roles here present the reality of the bitter disenfranchised, downtrodden by economic hardship who either striking back in protest of the general unfairness of life or simply adhere to the low expectations given them by birthright as natives of the projects of Charlestown.
Yet in spite of steering away from the stereotypical, there remains that quality about the movie that fails to set it above mediocrity, something not helped at all by certain discrepancies of script that detract from what is a clear attempt at circumventing the "commercial" arena into the possibly literary. And that basically means, it's a film that tries to be "literary" but misses the mark by painfully mere inches because of key plot factors that are a little absurd.
There are two of them, these little unrealistic key plot factors, and for the sake of not being a total spoil sport, I will mention only one: The developing connection between Doug (Ben Affleck) and Claire (Rebecca Hall). This comes about in a way that is outright absurd, to be a harsh but factual critic.
Claire is forced face to the floor in a bank robbery stick up; watches a man bludgeoned to death by one of the robbers, and is taken hostage after sounding the alarm, to be ditched by the edge of the ocean with a blindfold, and, this same Claire – after such a horrendous ordeal in which she glimpsed none of the men who'd carried out the attack because of the frightful masks they had on – this same Claire meets a random guy at a laundry mart – she doesn't know him from Adam; she should be at least a little on guarded/hesitant in meeting random guys who could easily be the still at large bank robbers that traumatised her, but, oh no, this Claire immediately attaches herself to this random guy, spilling every little detail about herself, including how she's working with the FBI on the robbery case! Absurd? I'll say.
And in the end it gets even more incongruous – something I'm not even going to get into.
So, my final statement is this: well-made + well-executed (by fair characterisation and good acting) + an alright script = promising, but not a must see.