The Town (2010) 8/10
For Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), Jim Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), and their friends, bank robbery is the family business. They live in the Charlestown section of Boston, a center for bank and armored car robbery. Now Doug wants out. He’s falling for Claire (Rebecca Hall) and the FBI is looking into his last robbery. But getting out isn’t going to be easy. Directed by Ben Affleck.
The Town makes an art of gritty, but it still looks good. Maybe I should say Affleck can’t make up his mind, but instead I feel like he recognizes the fine line between realistic and annoying. There’s certainly a trend towards documentary-style, hand-held, muted colors, and the like, to broadcast to the audience, “Hey, we’re authentic!” Yeah, sure. What Affleck does is cut in little bits of grittier filming, blended with a more conventional look, and it works. It’s important, because it’s the kind of movie where people say “the city is a character,” and so you do have to feel the locations. There’s a strong sense here of alleys, bars, shops, crappy apartments, gentrification—the whole way in which a city lives, breaths, and grows.
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