The Town

This summer has been drawn-out with only a very small handful of action movies that can be considered worth seeing again and there haven’t been very many well-done attention-getters. Few films have received great ratings in recent months, most crashing and burning on Rotten Tomatoes (movies such as The Expendables and Resident Evil: Afterlife).

To be completely honest, I had been skeptical recently on the action-film genre. Weak plot lines and ridiculous feats of human reflex or strength seemed to be plaguing the theaters as of late. When I saw the trailer for The Town some time at the beginning of the year, I couldn’t help but feel the same way, especially since the movie starred Ben Affleck, a rather inactive performer for the past several years.

After doing some research and finding extremely positive comments (scoring a rare 93% based on 117 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes), I had to see the movie for myself.

The movie begins with a very powerful opening line: There are over 300 bank robberies in Boston every year. Most of these professionals live in a 1-square-mile neighborhood called Charlestown. The prologue does a great job to set the scenery for the next two hours of the film.

Despite my bias against Ben Affleck, there is a lot to like about his latest movie. The Town is about a gang of bank robbers, the people who they love, and they thrill of success as well as the consequences that come with it.

The film focuses mainly on Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), a career criminal and heist veteran. During one of his jobs, he and his crew take bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) as a hostage in order to keep the police off their backs. Jem Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) fears that letting her go was a mistake and that Doug needs to be sure she has no way to betray them to the feds.

In the process of his scouting and digging, Doug falls in love with her. Claire represents a different life for him with her love of working in the town’s garden and volunteering at the Charlestown community center in her spare time. MacRay decides that after his last job, he would hang up being the criminal and change his life for the better.

I found the movie’s themes of change and hope for the future attractive combined with well-done action. Despite lacking the blunt nature and gore factor of The Departed, The Town has its strong points in powerful performances done by Affleck, Hall, and Renner. Overall I agree with Rotten Tomatoes, The Town is a knock-out film for 2010.

I highly recommend The Town if you’re looking for a thrill that this year seems to have lacked. It’s packed with action from high-speed car chases to shoot-outs with federal agents. Ben Affleck proves that he is a director to be reckoned with, and The Town is a great come back.