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The Town Review

September 17, 2010 by · Comments Off on The Town Review 

The Town Review, “The Town” is a gang of thieves in the neighborhood of Boston, Charlestown, which has produced over the bank and armored car thieves than anywhere else in the country. Who says there’s no such thing as robust job creation in America?

Directed by Ben Affleck, who also plays as a leader Doug MaCray thief, The Town is often thin on the edges, but soft at the base. The script by Ben Affleck, Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard, based on the novel “Prince of Thieves” by Chuck Hogan, consumes less about life than others, the films of the same theme, particularly “The Departed”. It attracts more TV cop shows. (The fact that the film makes explicit Doug giving a speech about his fascination with the “CSI” series does not diminish the familiarity.)

The hard-on-the-outside, good heart-on-the-inside Doug goes with Claire (Rebecca Hall), the bank manager who is held hostage by his crew (dressed as elves), and released healthy and sound. He then seeks out his novels and his knowledge that he was her kidnapper.

Claire Sweet-souled, with his yen for gardening and volunteer work with children, is a better life for Doug and if, as we have seen so many times before in movies crime drives, the good-bad guy decides that after a year, it is beyond the life of the crook forever.

It is never, of course, as simple as that. The federal government, led by Agent Frawley (Jon Hamm), is yapping at his heels, this is her best friend and accomplice of criminals, Jem (Jeremy Renner), which is like a walking talking time bomb. (Renner played a dismantler bomb in Iraq in “The Hurt Locker.” He might want to lighten his next role.)

As a director, Ben Affleck does not exaggerate the Irish Catholic Irish community of Charlestown, and the actors do not exaggerate their accents. There are wonderful cameo performances by Chris Cooper as a convict father Doug, and Pete Postlethwaite as the owner scurviest florist shop you will ever meet.

Affleck, often underrated as an actor, perfectly adapted to this environment. With a script under shots and less shooting and hunting scenes to pump up the temperature, The Town might have amounted to anything more than a movie from time to time good crooks difficulties. There is a knife blade, but it was dull. Grade: B

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