Saturday 14 January 2012

The Town (2010)



The Town is a bank heist movie with a bit of a romantic twist to it. After four guys hold up a bank at the beginning of the film, a hostage (Rebecca Hall) is taken who is shortly let go when the robbers are out of danger (it kinda makes sense in the film). She is then viewed by the criminals as a loose end, but when Doug (Ben Affleck) tracks Claire down he starts to fall in love with her. Doug is forced to balance this relationship with the local criminal kingpin (Pete Postlethwaite), and reluctantly agrees to do one last job. Meanwhile the FBI are slowly closing the net.

As well as starring in the main role, Ben Affleck also directs this film, which can't have been easy, so it's impressive that he has made a fairly solid gangster story. It's nothing special, but I did find myself feeling quite tense during the final heist, wondering who was going to make it through. It's a good story and the cast are generally good, nothing outstanding; Ben is a good driving force throughout the movie, and Jeremy Renner's character is suitably unpredictable. It's funny how when in these films the bank robbers wear comedy masks (skeletons or nuns in this case) I can't help but think of Point Break. I'm sure the Dead Presidents weren't the first daft masks in cinema bank jobs, but for me they are the most memorable.

The Town was an enjoyable film, tense at points, well directed and competently acted; but it's really nothing to write home about.

1 comment:

  1. I actually liked this movie. It dragged at some points, but it was a well balanced film with good acting. I never saw it in theaters but I was on Starz page on DISH Online and watched it for the first time. My roommates had seen it and didn’t give it a lot props, but I am never one to judge what I haven’t seen. I think they were wrong, Ben did a good job directing and acting in the movie, and he had a great supporting cast as well. The only thing it was missing was Matt Damon to pop in and go Bourne on somebody. At least tomorrow when I go to work at DISH I will have a new movie to talk to the movie buffs about. They all love breath movies, and brag about the movies on DISH online, and even though I never thought I would be that big into streaming, all these movies available to me make it so that I can’t stop watching new ones, and old ones. .

    ReplyDelete