The Town **** (2010, Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner) – Classic Movie Review 585

Ben Affleck makes a scalding job of directing this 2010 superb cops and bank robbers heist movie thriller, but it’s his stunning performance that really gives his movie class. He’s just so darned good as Boston lowlife Doug MacRay, leader of an elite little band of thieves, who take a manager (Rebecca Hall) hostage when they hit one Boston bank.

Affleck falls for Hall, then wants to retire on his ill-gotten gains, but evil old florist (!) ‘Fergie’ Colm (Pete Postlethwaite) won’t let him and forces him into One Last Job! There’s no new story under the sun in the bank heist book, so director Affleck has his work cut out making it seem fresh, intelligent and exciting – but he does. Affleck, who looks best in a posh suit, doesn’t usually play lowlifes convincingly (just look at him in Gigli), but this time he’s got it just right, brilliantly right.

Not sure about Jon Hamm’s offbeat and eccentric performance as the head FBI agent hard on the crooks’ trail, but Hall is very good, establishing her relationship with Affleck as real and true – providing the heart and soul of the movie. Jeremy Renner was Oscar and Golden Globe nominated as Best Supporting Actor as James Coughlin, one of the robbers. The plot may not always ring entirely true, especially at the end, unfortunately, but the crackling dialogue and amazing bursts of action make for an awesome mix.

Well done, Ben! It proved his welcome career resuscitation movie.

Affleck is co-author of the screenplay with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard, adapting Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves.

It won the American Film Institute Film of the Year award. They said: ‘The Town carries all the essential tools of the great American heist movie and breaks into the classics of the genre with its own unique authenticity. Smart, sassy and tough entertainment, the film confirms the arrival of Ben Affleck as a director of distinction, a storyteller whose deft touch gives action, character and performance equal weight. Outstanding performances by Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall and Jon Hamm inhabit the film’s deeply rooted, rich atmosphere of Charlestown, Massachusetts, where we learn from a new generation that crime does pay, if your heart is true.’

Incidentally, this is set in Boston, where there are more than 300 bank robberies every year, and largely in a one-square-mile suburb of Boston, Charlestown, which has produced more bank and armoured car robbers than anywhere in the US.

Pete Postlethwaite died of cancer on January 2 2011, aged 64.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 585

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