The Town (2010) ***/*****

Something struck me as interesting as I watched the advertisements for this movie.  The trailers seemed to go to great lengths to present this as a film starring Ben Affleck and brought to us from the makers of Gone Baby Gone.  Never at any point did they mention that Ben Affleck was “the makers” of Gone Baby Gone.  That strikes me as weird considering that Gone Baby Gone, Affleck’s first effort as a director, was almost universally praised by critics and audiences, and Affleck as an actor… well… I don’t really hear good things.  I thought back to Affleck and Damon’s Oscar win for the Good Will Hunting script and all of the myth building that the entertainment media did around it.  Apparently, not satisfied with how their fledgling acting careers were going, they decided to write their own film so that they could cast themselves in key parts and use it as a springboard toward landing more roles.  You see, their priorities lied with acting.  It worked.  Both became huge stars and the film roles came in one after another.  If Affleck wasn’t doing a big budget blockbuster like Armageddon, then he was showing up in Oscar bait like Shakespeare in Love.  Everything was going great.  And then the real turds started piling up one after another.  Daredevil, Gigli, Jersey Girl; the results weren’t pretty.  It got to the point where you couldn’t mention the man’s name without getting a groan.  Admittedly, he was never the greatest actor on the block, but after putting people through so many bad career choices he got a pretty undeserved reputation as being the absolute worst in the world.  Then he directed Gone Baby Gone and people seemed ready to put some of the grudge aside.  I really liked that film and hoped that he had gotten past that “I’m an actor first” mentality and realized that his real talents might lie behind the scenes.  Would this film be the next step in the man’s career as a director or just a ploy to revive a crippled acting career like I feared?

The story is certainly constructed to revolve around Affleck’s character.  He plays Doug MacRay, a washed out ex hockey player with a history of abuse problems.  His mother walked out on him when he was a little boy, and his dad is doing several consecutive life sentences for a series of violent bank robberies.  When he was young he was taken in by his best friend Jem’s (Jeremy Renner) family and started dating his sister Krista (Blake Lively).  As we meet him in this film he has kicked his addiction problems, living clean and sober, but he has fallen into the family business and seems to be on a career path mirroring his father’s.  Jem is now his slightly unhinged and trigger happy right hand man and Krista is still deeply involved in the drug scene even though she’s trying to raise a child whose paternity seems to be in question.   Affleck is decent in the role.  The more weighty moments hit with a bit of a thud, but he’s able pull off the charm and humor inherent in his character really well.  The Boston accent is laid on a bit thick, but not in a way that seems inauthentic to real blue collar Bostonians.  It’s the accent that’s unbelievable, not Affleck’s rendition of it.  

While Renner’s character (that of the loose cannon that is jeopardizing everyone else’s safety) is ridiculously played out as an archetype, his was the performance that I most enjoyed in the film.  He gives good lower class meathead.  He feels dangerous in a real way, he frustrates you with his stubbornness, but when it comes time for you to sympathize for his character you do.  He did a large chunk of time in prison and seems to be both hardened and wounded by the experience.  He is a burden to the Doug character, who could probably be pulling off these jobs much smoother without Jem’s excessive violence and hostage taking.  But when he claims that he went to jail because of something he did to keep Doug safe, the dynamic of their interactions takes on an interesting complication.  Theirs was the relationship in this film that I was most invested in.  When everyone was singing Renner’s praises as an actor after The Hurt Locker I was left out in the cold.  I found his character there to be a pretty one-dimensional lunkhead and I didn’t find much in Renner’s performance to elevate what was on the page.  Here, when given something more complex, he rises to the challenge and really creates a lived in, authentic feeling character.

Blake Lively similarly impressed me in the brief screen time she got as Krista.  I haven’t seen her act before and my first impressions of her are promising ones.  Early in the film it seemed like she was going to get little more to do than play the prototypical drugged out townie girl, and she was pulling that off with ease.  It seems that many actors find it hard to play high characters without overacting, but everything Lively did seemed to hit that perfect, sleazy note without feeling forced.  She is visibly messed up, but there is also an edge to her actions that let you know she’s trying to maintain.  This isn’t a slapsticky performance played for attention; it’s a realist portrayal of a woman who has descended into the depths of addiction.  Visually she pulls off that perfect mix of being partied out and gross while at the same time being naturally beautiful that makes going to strip clubs such a skin crawling experience.  It’s not hard to visualize yourself being seduced by her and then feeling sick with yourself after the deed is done; a situation Doug must have experienced countless times over the years.  Later in the film her character, much like Renner’s, turns from being a pitiable bad influence on the protagonist to something more complex and more sympathetic, and I stayed with Lively and her performance through to the very end.  I would be happy to see her do more film work in the future.

Rebecca Hall plays Claire Keesey, a bank manager who is taken hostage during the first robbery sequence of the film and who later develops a relationship with Doug after he slyly approaches her in a Laundromat to find out if she saw anything during her experience and if she is cooperating with the FBI.  This was the portion of the film where they started to lose me.  Claire and Doug’s relationship becomes the central conflict of the story.  During the robbery she saw a tattoo on the back of Jem’s neck that could positively identify him.  What if she tells this to the FBI?  What does Doug do now that he has met and fallen for this woman who he has so greatly wronged?  What would her reaction be if she found out that Doug was one of the robbers?  The whole set up is unbelievable and beyond stupid.  I didn’t buy into Doug and Claire’s relationship or any of the manufactured drama that came along with it.  I can give praise to Hall as an actress though, as she infused Claire with enough relatable vulnerability to keep her from being vilified in my eyes.  Every time she showed up on screen I cringed because of where her character was taking the story; but I never hated her as a character, just as a plot device.  I attribute that almost entirely to Hall’s innate likability and what she was able to do with the role.

The FBI agent that is working with Claire and who comes to hunt Doug and his gang is played by Jon Hamm in his first major film role since gaining notoriety and acclaim for Mad Men.  His casting was the one that I was most excited for, as I love his work as Don Draper, but his ended up being the performance I was most disappointed by.  For the vast majority of the film he comes off as interchangeable cop guy.  Much of it is the script, which gives the character no backstory or unique personality traits to speak of, but some of the blame has to be levied at Hamm himself.  There is a scene late in the film where he confronts Krista in a bar and tries to bully her into informing on Doug and Jem that I really enjoyed.  When dealing with a character as weak and vulnerable as Krista, Hamm lays on the egotistical charm that he has become known for, but with a much more sinister edge than what he has done on television.  Instantly I knew that this scene had what I had been missing through the beginning two-thirds of the film.  If the self-assured smugness that he exudes in that one scene, the perverse pleasure he took at having the upper hand, was carried out through all of his earlier interactions, it could have added quite a bit to the character.  Instead he spends too much of his time being the bumbling whipping boy to Doug who verbally emasculates him in all of their interactions and completely neuters his chance at being a weighty antagonist for the film. 

The things The Town does best are its suspenseful moments and its action sequences.  Affleck knows how to ramp up tension and really get you worried for his characters.  There are several nail biting sequences that really stuck with me.  During the first robbery Claire is forced to open a combination lock while having several guns to her head.  Time is of the essence and there is a strong sense that if she doesn’t get the thing open fast enough things might turn violent.  She fumbles twice, adding to the urgency of the moment and adding an angry edge to Jem.  Affleck shoots the scene in a way that makes you feel every second of her struggle and it really starts the film off on the right foot.  There is a scene where Jem comes upon Claire and Doug on an al fresco date that was probably my favorite of the film.  Jem isn’t aware that he will be identified if Claire sees his tattoo, Doug doesn’t know why Jem has showed up or what his intentions are, and Claire has no idea who Jem is or why his showing up has suddenly created a very unpleasant vibe.  You really get sucked in, not wanting her to see the tattoo.  Renner is such an effective loose cannon up to that point that you really don’t know why he’s there or what he might do if the situation starts to go south.  There is a long walk through a crowded Fenway Park where Doug and Jem have to pass hundreds of crewmembers and security guards while carrying huge duffel bags of money that they’ve just stolen from the park’s money room.  You follow along with them the entire walk as they shoot nervous looks back and forth and try to walk as fast as they can while still looking kind of casual.  There’s no quick cut away to the rendezvous point to move the film’s pace along; you have to stay with them in that situation the whole time. 

There are three robbery sequences in the film and I found them all to be entertaining in their own way.  In the first two they don Halloween masks, stylized skeletons for the first and decaying nuns for the second, and both really work as iconic visuals for the film.  The nun’s especially were creepy, memorable images and I can see this movie becoming known for those masks much in the same way that Point Break is for the ex-presidents.  The second robbery includes a car chase through the narrow Boston streets that I really enjoyed.  Those tiny, closed in roadways were a great location for a car chase and the whole thing was cut together in a competent, easy to follow way.  The action is able to stay big and exciting without crossing the line into fantastical.  Each robbery is bigger than the last, more risky, more violent, with more at stake.  It gives the movie a strong build that climaxes in the appropriate place.  And that last robbery, it is an action climax, but by the time it comes around it’s the personal relationships that infuse the action with its tension.  The choices the characters make based on how they feel about one another is what is going to determine the outcomes.  It makes the whole scene work on multiple emotional levels.  This isn’t just a case of good guys versus bad guys and who is going to win; everyone has multiple motivations going in and things could play out in any number of ways.  Perhaps ironically, it was with the film’s action sequences where I found the best, most effective screenwriting.

What didn’t sit so well with me in this film, as I’ve hinted at earlier, were the romantic elements.  The main relationship just doesn’t work and I don’t think anybody could have pulled it off.  There is far too much at stake for Doug to pursue a relationship with Claire.  We’re talking real, life ruining stuff.  How can I be expected to believe that any reasonable adult is going to risk his and all of his friend’s lives and livelihoods for a romantic entanglement?  And how can I be asked to continue rooting for him after he has done so?  Oh, they’re in love!  What can he do?  Love comes out of nowhere and can’t be controlled!  Love conquers all!  Give me a break.  The entire conceit of these two people engaging in a relationship is stupid and juvenile.  I generally find sex scenes to be unnecessary and distracting in films and there is one here that annoyed me more than usual.  Doug and Claire consummate their relationship while we are given juxtaposed images of her kidnapping.  We go back and forth from ecstatic pleasure to sheer terror.  The result was really ham fisted and condescending.  I got it, this is a volatile set up for a relationship and things are going to get ugly.  I didn’t need you to give me visual reminders; I know how to watch a movie.  And what’s wrong with a tasteful cutaway rather than an awkward, slow motion wrestling match under a sheer sheet shot with dramatic lighting?  I don’t want to give too much away about how the film plays out, but I will add that the idea that the film continues to milk the “will they, won’t they” storyline after Claire finds out that Doug is a murderous, thieving, psychopath that kidnapped her and held a gun to her head is astoundingly stupid.  

I was much more interested in Doug and Jem’s relationship than I was his and Claire’s.  The toxic nature of Doug’s attachment to Jem’s drug addicted sister, their neighborhood, their family, and the way it butted heads with the responsibility he has to them all was the most intriguing element of the film for me and it got short shrift and all but forgotten by the end of the film in favor of one-dimensional forbidden love crap.  Doug was a character that wanted to move on to something better.  He had a past filled with mistakes, but he was on his way to making amends.  He had cleaned himself up, he even intended on getting out of the bank robbing business after that one last score.  And at the same time, here is his best friend, near brother, who he will have to abandon in order to move on.  Jem is too scarred, too irreparably damaged by his experiences to ever do anything but hold Doug back.  There’s real tension there.  There is indication that Doug might be the father of Krista’s child and isn’t taking responsibility for it.  She is a complete mess of a human being and nothing good can come of a relationship with her, but doesn’t he owe something to that kid?  This is a question that is left all but unexplored other than in a couple throw away lines of innuendo; but it is what was contained in those few lines that was the film I wanted to see.  Instead we got focus on paper-thin plot threads that eventually just fell apart for me.  Not nearly enough about what these characters were doing and how they were behaving was adequately explained.  Why would Doug try to date someone who will inevitably hate him and ruin his life?  Why did these guys keep performing high profile, broad daylight bank robberies when the FBI was clearly watching their every move and very hotly on their tails?  Where did they keep getting all of the convenient uniforms and equipment that they needed to pull off these jobs?  Eventually I stopped believing in the universe of this film and was completely sucked out of it.  In a very fundamental way, The Town failed for me as a film, but there was so much potential in here that I have to view it as a middle of the road disappointment rather than a complete failure. There is a great film in here somewhere; it just needed someone to trim the fat and flesh out the good parts.

So, in the end, did I find this film to be the transparent attempt at reviving an acting career that I feared?  Not really.  That very well may have been the intentions, but there is enough here that was clearly crafted with care and intelligence to dismiss The Town as a big budget demo reel.  Affleck’s character is the center of the film, its star, but all of the other players get good stuff to work with as well.  If Affleck continues to take the care in making his films that he did here, then I don’t really care what his motivations are for making them or if he continues to write parts for himself in all of them.  I never really bought the Ben Affleck as worst actor in the world myth anyways.  And, despite my disappointments, I don’t see this film as a misstep for Affleck’s career as a director.  It was a film I didn’t connect with as strongly as Gone Baby Gone, it was a bit of a lackluster effort, but still one that showed off the great potential in it’s director.  Will the acting offers start coming Affleck’s way if the box office for this is good?  Maybe a few, but I don’t think there will be enough for him to stop making his own films again.  This isn’t a product that will succeed or fail on his performance, which was capable but forgettable.  The Town was sold on its connection to Gone Baby Gone and The Departed, two other Boston based crime films that did very well.  I think most of the people out there casting films are smart enough to know that.  So to Affleck I say, sure, go ahead, sign on to act in a couple more films.  Why not?  But then get back to work on another script.  I’ll even let you cast yourself in the lead role.  Except, next time how about we try for something a little different?  Maybe something that doesn’t fetishize working class Boston so much?  Try to use that affinity you have for location scouting and hiring memorable, local faces in a different setting.  Tell a story about people from a different country, maybe a different social status.  See how it works; see how you like it.  You might find that stretching your creative muscles in the writing process is just as fulfilling as the joy you get from working for Michael Bay and Kevin Smith.  I’ll be watching.
The Town