The Town Rolls in with a Bang
NEIRAD enilno edition
Most films nowadays don’t have four grown men dressed up as nuns shooting at police officers with automatic weapons in the streets of Boston. The Town (Rated R) does. The film is directed by Ben Affleck, who also co-wrote and stars in it, alongside Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, and Jon Hamm.
The film, set in the present day, tells the story of a group of sophisticated and intelligent bank robbers terrorizing the neighborhoods of Boston, while at the same time being hunted down by a ruthless FBI team led by Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm). Doug MacRay (Affleck) wishes to leave the business of holding up banks and run away with Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall), who so happens to be the woman that his team kidnapped at their latest bank heist.
From my viewing, the story moves at a brisk pace, and even with a two-hour running time, the high intensity of the film creates an excellent pace that is anything but slow. In short, The Town never lets up in terms of presenting the audience with the tension of being a modern day bank robber.
From my perspective I thought the acting all around is well done, particularly from Jon Hamm and Jeremy Renner, who plays Affleck’s hot-on-his-heels childhood friend, James Coughlin. Rebecca Hall’s character seems a little stereotypical because she plays a sensitive woman who can’t come to terms with her current predicament. However, in my opinion, Hall performs well in the scenes that she is in. Affleck is also very good, considering he co-wrote and directed the film, and while his husk voice and demanding tone become irritating sometimes, he does his part well. The film’s story seems very authentic, and it’s clear the crew of the film did a thorough job in researching how a bank heist would work. The three heists of the film are intense and very well shot.
The Town clearly has influences from Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and Michael Mann’s Heat, in terms of its characters and how the bank heists scenes are played out. In relation to Scorsese Departed, the two films both take place in Boston, and have the plot of cops and criminals ramming against each other. The film’s three bank heist scenes are clearly influenced from Mann’s Heat in terms of how they are set up, shot, and the sound of raw intensity that comes with a real life bank heist; the audience hears each gunshot and scream, with no overtone of music throughout.
For me, The Town is a well shot, well acted, and a gritty intense action drama that presents the audience with an authentic look at the life of a modern bank-robber, and the consequences, as well as perks, that comes with the job.
