Charlestown has produced more bank and armored car robbers than any other town in the United States. Robbing banks became a trade passed that was passed down from father to son.

This chilling quote opens The Town, self-directed, starred and co-written by Ben Affleck, set in Charlestown of Boston. With his critically acclaimed directorial debut Gone Baby Gone (starring his brother, Casey Affleck), another crime drama set in his hometown of Boston, Affleck has rightfully earned the nickname “King of Boston”.

It’s not a nickname undeserved, as Affleck delivers one of the most gripping films this year.

Adapted from Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves and the second book adaptation Affleck has directed (Gone Baby Gone was adapted from similarly named novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Mystic River and Shutter Island), The Town stars Ben Affleck (Daredevil),  as de facto leader Doug MacRay, Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) as hot tempered James Coughlin, Slaine (Gone Baby Gone) as Albert Magloan and Owen Burke in his big screen debut as Desmond Elden, a group of four good friends who also rob banks and armored cars together.


From left: Slaine as Magloan, Affleck as MacRay, Renner as Coughlin, Burke as Elden.

Wearing monster masks, they rob a Cambridge bank together with clockwork precision, taking the bank manager, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall), hostage, releasing her near a rocky beach. Unbeknownst to them, Keesey had seen an identifying marker (a blue tattoo on the back of his neck) of Coughlin, when his mask was pulled up accidentally.

Another problem: Keesey lived four blocks away from the bank robbers. Convinced that Keesey could identify their voices if she heard them again, Coughlin wanted to “tie up loose ends”.  However, MacRay suggests a better plan: befriending Keesey to find out what she knew. It doesn’t go as well as he thought and he falls in love with her.

MacRay discovers that Keesey couldn’t recognize their voices but she knew about Coughlin’s tattoo, which began a cat-and-mouse game of hiding his friends from Keesey, and vice versa, while continuing his heist jobs.

Meanwhile, an FBI agent, Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm, most famous for being Donald Draper in Mad Men) begins connecting the dots and inch ever so closer to putting them on the inside of a jail cell.


Hamm as Frawley

The Town is one of the best heist and crime films of this decade. The gritty realistic action drama steeps the story in the authentic cultural flavor of Boston and Charlestown, with characters like Irishman Fergus ‘Fergie’ Colm (Pete Postlethwaite) speaking with accents. The acting is excellent all around the board, except for Affleck, who appears a little wooden at times.

For a heist film, the most important part are the heists themselves, and The Town doesn’t disappoint. Unlike the spectacular and flashyOcean’s trilogy, The Town’s heist scenes are authentic and realistic and seems like an actual robbery, with no flourishes or ribbons on top. That doesn’t mean the heist scenes are boring though, as the action is tightly choreographed with a little shaky camera added in. For a 2 hour movie, there are actually 4 heists in total in the film, definitely giving you value for money.

Co-written by Affleck, Aaron Stockard and Peter Craig, The Town is brilliantly scripted with events constantly pushing forward the plot, particularly in the second half of the film. However, the first half of the film seems overly stretched with talky portions of MacRay dating Keesey and telling long childhood stories. The burgeoning romance also feels overly clumsy, developing too quickly.

Also, there are several red herrings in the plot that only serve to pump up the tension, but not actually serving any plot purpose. For example, the blue tattoo of Coughlin that Keesey saw doesn’t push the plot forward at all. Its only use was to up the tension of being discovered when Coughlin crashes a lunch date between her and MacRay.

The Town is pretty funny for a crime drama, with some unexpected humor in the dialogue. When Keesey told MacRay she would recognize the bank robbers’ voices if she heard them again, MacRay responded with a dry “I doubt that”, cracking up the entire theatre.

There’s also a particularly hilarious scene near the end when the robbers, wearing nun masks meet a cop in a car who doesn’t want to get involved in their little heist. I won’t spoil that scene for you and let you find out for yourself.


Nun masks: My halloween costume for this year.

Overall, The Town is a great unforgettable heist film filmed on a relatively low budget of US$37 million (S$48 million). The only gripes I would have is that the accents make it difficult to understand them sometimes, and I found myself reading the subtitles more than once just to make out what they were saying.

Ben Affleck has proven himself to be a better director than actor with his second feature film, and his next film will be one to watch.

https://youtu.be/bWxEKnf3Krk
The Town trailer

Movie: The Town
Rating: ★★★★✩

Opens: 21 October 2010
Duration: 124 minutes
Language: English with Mandarin Subtitles
Age Rating: M18
Genre: Crime, Drama

Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall