Ben Affleck impressed with his debut as director for “Gone Baby Gone,” a criminally underrated film. And he manages to impress yet again with “The Town,” a film about crime becoming a way of life, and death just another consequence for a profession. When is enough finally enough for someone? This is examined with Doug McRay, a man who has resorted to robbing banks for a living after a descent in to drugs. He’s mastered bank robbing down to a fine art, and one he specializes in that keeps him and his group of gun toting guns for hire constantly on the verge of being murdered on the job. As examined by the prologue, crime is often a way of life for folks in their city, and with Charlestown being the number one source for bank robbers, Doug only knows how to commit crimes, and is a veteran of such an common trade that he can barely remember what life was like before it.
Riding on memories of a mother he barely knew, and a father who is dying in jail, he depends on the constant promises of his local boss, a florist who masterminds the operations from his flower shop. But one fateful day, Doug and his team infiltrate a local bank and come across a helpless bank manager who they take hostage and force to open a safe. When she gathers a glimpse at cohort James tattoo, she’s forever traumatized by the events that ensue. The twist comes when Doug and the team discover her name is Claire and she lives right in their neighborhood. Frazzled and panicked, Doug is forced in to surveying her from afar and takes it upon himself to get to know her in hopes of acquiring information about what she saw and what she didn’t. But when he gets too close to her and her loving nature, suddenly the life he was much too comfortable with just isn’t an option anymore.
Can Claire present Doug with a way out? Or is he doomed to a perpetual life of crime based on pipe dreams that are destined to destroy the people around him? “The Town” is an examination not so much about leaving the life of crime behind, but more just getting out of crime. How do you escape something you’ve known since your teens? How do you re-adjust to a life that doesn’t incorporate robbing local banks and murder? More importantly, how do you leave behind a life that you’re just beginning to understand? Affleck’s second directorial outing is yet another film based on hard decisions and tough truths, and one that rides on a power house cast of amazing performers, all of whom spend the run time of the film playing cat and mouse, attempting to outwit one another.
Jon Hamm is especially excellent as FBI Agent Frawley who makes Doug’s case a special interest in his life, especially when Doug and his team manage to out run and out match the authorities at every turn, while Jeremy Renner is the stand out as Coughlin, the psychotic right hand man to Doug whose entire life rides on his next job and little else. Ben Affleck directs with such a passion and raw fervor that every moment of “The Town” feels fragile and breakneck, and with more and more gun fights spreading throughout the transformation of the narrative in to a tense fight for innocence, Affleck makes it apparent that Doug may never escape his life. With every chance to escape, a new opportunity for danger presents itself and one final job signals a possible release, and one that will cost Doug.
“The Town” is yet another film of Affleck’s repertoire as his re-invention as a director that didn’t garner nearly enough acclaim as it should have, but as a crime thriller it’s on par with “Heat” as one of the finest and most adult. And in a year filled with juvenile junk like “Takers,” it’s nice to have a crime thriller that’s complex, morally complicated, and just for the mature audiences. Ben Affleck is a remarkable director and like “Gone Baby Gone,” his newest crime thriller is about hard decisions, the road less traveled, and a conflict of morality that will keep audiences guessing and pondering on decisions for years. With a wonderful ensemble cast, and an excellent sense of pacing and unfolding of narrative, “The Town” is a grade A crime thriller.