The Town (2010)

I normally think you can tell a lot about a film by what trailers are included on the DVD. Presumably some thought goes into it and the powers that be pick the trailers most suited to the feature film. Many films on my ‘to watch’ list have first come to my attention as trailers on DVD and I enjoy getting excited about new films almost as much as I do watching the film itself (OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration). It does however lead to the difficult situation where for every film you watch, you find two or three more that you want to watch. You’re never going to win that game. Unless of course you’ve seen all the films in the trailers already, then you get to experience a smug sense of useless satisfaction.

In front of The Town were trailers for Due Date, and Life as We Know it. Oh dear. This being one of the more mainstream films on my rental list, and one co-written and directed by Ben Affleck, I was prepared for something a little more blockbustery but Life as We Know it? Really? I saw bits of that when I worked at the Cinema and it has nothing in common with gun-wielding bank-robbers. It’s also a pile of shit. Maybe once you include certain actors like Ben Affleck, Jude Law, or Matt Damon films cease to have a proper genre and simply get put in a category of loud, bright, ego-massaging, Hollywood money-making schemes, so you can include any old rubbish you want. Or maybe the trailer-picker was hungover. Or maybe I should shut up.

Moving on.

The Town is set in Charlestown, Boston, and shows us the lives of people for whom crime is simply a way of life. Doug MacRay (Affleck) and his friends Jem, Gloansy and Dez, are professional bank robbers and the film opens with them doing what they do best and robbing a bank. They do it in style too, with some rather menacing Skeletor masks. For some reason they take the manager, Claire, hostage but later decide to release her without harm. This whole hostage thing is new for them and, unsure what to do, Jem suggests killing her to stop her talking to the FBI. Doug doesn’t think this is such a good idea though and follows Claire around for a bit to make sure she’s OK.

The problem is, he starts talking to her in the laundromat one day, and a romance begins to develop. Well that was never going to go well was it?

Not content with one bank, we see a couple more robberies from the group, with the police and FBI hot on their trail. The ‘jobs’ continue to be stylishly executed (mostly), with scary nun costumes and the smoothness of Ocean’s Eleven. Surely it can only be a matter of time before their luck runs out?

The problem Affleck has with The Town, and the problem he had with Argo, is that if you arm yourself with a great script, and a great cast, you will inevitably end up being the weakest part of your own film. That’s not something anybody wants to have to deal with. Luckily for Affleck, he also hired Blake Lively (Gossip Girl, Green Lantern). She plays Krista, the drugged up sister of Jem and sometime girlfriend of Doug (and possibly the mother of his child). I dislike Lively generally and find her really quite annoying so, by comparison, I found less to object to in Affleck’s acting. Until later on that is when she appears less. Oh well – you can’t have everything.

On the whole I was really quite pleasantly surprised with The Town, as I was with Argo. It’s a good film, and I cared about Doug and was routing for him throughout. I certainly enjoyed it and I would very possibly watch it again.

It’s just a shame about the ending.