The Town

The Town is a 2010 drama directed by Ben Affleck.  It also stars Ben Affleck (Good Will Hunting), Jeremy Renner ( 28 Weeks Later), John Hamm (Mad Men), and Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona).  The film takes place in present day Boston centering around the character Doug MacRay (Affleck).  MacRay and his best friends. including the borderline sociopathic James Coughlin (Renner), are a group of bank robbers that are thicker than thieves in the infamous town of Charlestown inside Boston.  Charleston has had a long reputation of being a very dangerous city to be a bank teller in as it has the highest amount of bank robberies of any town or city in the United States. 

            While robbing a bank, MacRay and his band of thieves have to take a hostage when the emergency alarm is tripped.  The hostage that they take is Claire Keesey (Hall).  Claire is not harmed or kept hostage for very long by the group as they soon drive her to the shore and let her free.  However, after a couple days it is revealed that the FBI is now getting involved in the case and begin to interview Claire.  This distresses the group and they decide to send MacRay to shake her up and make sure that she does not say anything.  However, rather than roughing her up, MacRay finds himself beginning to fall for Claire.  MacRay soon finds himself torn between his past life of staying with his gang of thieves, and his future life that he could have with Claire. 

            The film is actually extremely well done.  Affleck displays great attention to detail with his directing and does a very good job at creating a great deal of suspense during key points of the film.  All of the performances done by the ensemble are superb.  Renner does a very good job of showing someone who is painfully evil.  He can't help but love his best friend MacRay, but is willing to almost do too much in order to keep him with him.  One of the strongest aspects of the film was the cinematography.  There is little to no gain during the darker sequences in the film and the camera does a very good job of finding the perfect balance of steady and handheld/shaky cam for the face paced action sequences, especially the car chase sequence.

            The sound effects for the feature are very authentic.  Usually gunshot sound effects in films all sound the same, but for The Town it appears that the Sound Designer wanted to go for a more authentic approach when adding sound effects to G36 assault rifles, and Berretta hand guns for the film.

            The film was very effective for me personally.  As a fan of heist films I found this one to be one of the best heist films since Michael Mann's "Heat".  The film did a great job of making you feel for even the more evil characters such as James Coughlin.  The action sequences in the film are so well thought out, shot, and edited that there is never an instance where I found myself confused as to what was going on, which is often a weakness to action heist films.  Overall, The Town was a solid film and I look forward to seeing what nods it receives from the Academy next year.