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The Town (2010)

Director: Ben Affleck

Time Out rating

Average user rating

19 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

This is a slick but inert cops ’n’ robbers yarn from Ben Affleck (with his director-writer-star hat on) that feels all but indistinguishable from the thousands of similar films that have blazed a trail before it. Sporting a neat crew cut, a sweat-glazed six-pack and a nice line in ‘Boston’-emblazoned tracksuit tops, Affleck is Doug, the conflicted leader of a rubber-masked wrecking crew who take down banks on behalf of kingpin (and florist!) Pete Postlethwaite. Doug wants to take his loot and make a break for Florida, a desire fuelled by his relationship with Rebecca Hall’s kindly soup-kitchen mama. But Pete’s got dirt on him, and even though the Feds are closing in (led by ‘Mad Men’ heartthrob John Hamm), the team keep breaking banks, leading to a minutely orchestrated take-down of the Boston Red Sox’s home ground.

You’d hazard from this and his previous directorial effort, ‘Gone Baby Gone’, that Affleck counts Michael Mann and Sidney Lumet among his muses. You’d also guess from the film’s slickly calculated pacing and surfeit of soulful heart-to-hearts that break up the carnage that he has a fondness for the TV work of David Simon, notably ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ and ‘The Wire’. Yet despite the grubby locations in the Bostonian crime-hub of Charlestown, the film’s credibility feels severely hamstrung by the fact that even though the robbers (especially Jeremy Renner as a gung-ho ex-con) are armed and dangerous, too much effort is made to ensure us that it’s never nice-guy Affleck who’s pulling the trigger.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London Issue 2092: 23–29 September, 2010

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User reviews of this film

mplo said...

Posted on Mar 14 2012 15:33 The Town is a very cheesy and overrated. It's more like a feature-length, made-for-TV soap opera than a regular movie. The cast is poor to mediocre at best, and the immature, teen-like Doug/Claire romance, which takes up much too much of the film, has no real believability or chemistry to it. The beginning of the film, with the aerial shots of Charlestown, and the opening bank heist, was okay, but, within a matter of minutes, this film went from being okay to just plain bad! It's toitally unrealistic...come on..no woman in her right mind would meet a guy in a laundromat who'd been following her for weeks, accept a date with him and then stick with him after learning that he was the ringleader of the gang who'd knocked over her bank and gunpoint and then kidnapped her. That's so stupid, it almost defies belief!
There are several things that most of the critics and average moviegoers alike, seem to miss, either out of naivete, or willful ignorance:
A) Doug put the romance moves on Claire to make doubly sure that she didn't blow their cover by talking to the Feds. The movie convinces most people that Doug loved her, but did he really? Nope. He was just out to exploit her as a bargaining chip, because Doug is an armed felon and wanted fugitive.
B) Doug had been following Claire for several weeks prior to him and his men knocking over her bank at gunpoint and kidnapping her.
C) Doug ultimately skipped town for Florida, first because he was on the lam from the law...not on vacation, and secondly, he'd gotten what he really wanted out of Claire; a promise from her not to squeal to the Feds. Thirdly, Doug knew, at some level, that his days of hiding out in Florida were numbered; he'd eventually be hunted down, caught (perhaps violently) and either sent to prison or gunned down by the Feds.
I think that The Town would've been a better film, with a better cast, a tougher Claire instead of such a weepy angelic chick, and an ending where Doug is sent to a federal penitentiary to serve long, hard time for his crimes (i. e. armed robbery, kidnapping and murder), and Claire had been criminally prosecuted herself, or at least put on some sort of probation for abetting and protecting Doug by tipping him off to the Feds and generally protecting him with lies to the Feds, and for receiving stolen goods (i. e. the money that Doug stole from the Fenway Park heist and left for Claire in her little community garden.)

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Henry Zakumumpa said...

Posted on Jan 10 2011 12:42 On the whole 'The Town' is a worthy, albeit forgettable 120 minutes at the Cineplex.
Ben Affleck is on the other side of the lens, directing but also playing a leading role in this heist movie. This is his second outing as a director after ‘Gone Baby Gone’. But this is a better product than his first outing. He is certainly getting better as a director and in some ways an actor, as his directing is also a vehicle for his acting career.
Unlike many movies I have seen in the past couple of months, ‘The Town’ didn’t get me dozing for a moment which says good things about the movie.
‘The Town’ is a movie set in Charlestown in Boston about a group of hard-knock childhood friends who get in the habit of robbing banks in their home town with flawless, meticulous planning. This, of course, works most of the time but they have their waterloo on the horizon.
Ben Affleck plays the brains of the bunch moderating his more overzealous group members. But he wants out to move to Florida with his new girlfriend (the manager of a bank he robs!) and since this is no public service job where you can quit at liberty all with whom he is in cahoots with, have something to say about that.
If you want to breathtaking car chases, daring bank robberies, tension and suspense and even a laugh, The Town’ is your cup of tea.
You have to occasionally suspend your disbelief as there a couple of scenes that will stretch your imagination or the scale of believability.

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Justin Berkovi said...

Posted on Jan 03 2011 23:58 Once again I find myself at odds with Time Out's critics and I think this will be the last time I use the site as a reference point for accurate 'critique' of cinema.
'The Town' is a solid and enjoyable film and I disagree totally with it being labelled 'flat'. The entire film kept me on edge wondering how it was going to pan out and hats off to Affleck directing and acting in this.
Heat being one of my favourite films of the genre is a (flawed) masterpiece that would be very difficult to match in terms of atmosphere but that's the entire point. The people here are not the well heeled elite of the underworld but merely 'townies' trying to get by, doing something their way.
Go watch or rent it!

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Iain said...

Posted on Dec 27 2010 05:32 "too much effort is made to ensure us that it’s never nice-guy Affleck who’s pulling the trigger." Does Jenkins even watch in their entirety the movies he's supposed to be reviewing?

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Thomas Noctor said...

Posted on Dec 18 2010 14:08 Seen better, seen worse. Average action thriller, that's all I can really say. Started out well, but would the gang really let a member date a suspect? Ok film worth a watch, but I wouldn't be watching it again or it wouldn't be sticking in My memory!

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Robert Thornton said...

Posted on Nov 11 2010 13:52 Why can't there be a thriller with some grains of credibility. This is yet again from the bish bosh bash school with stupid chase scenes which are about a million miles from reality. Affleck was his usual wooden self and ends up being a free man after armed robbery and murder. A waste of time and money.

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Paul said...

Posted on Oct 18 2010 21:46 (delete as applicable) Hollywood, banks, robbery, vengeance, cash, guns, testosterone, expletives, prison, chase, shooting, male bonding, monosyllables, revenge, cops, whiskers, baseball caps and yawning

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scrumpyjack said...

Posted on Oct 07 2010 20:31 Good, solid crime flick. nothing to love about it, nothing to hate about it. Just 2 hours entertainment. Think "Brooklyn's Finest"
7/10

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Mike said...

Posted on Oct 05 2010 21:28 A so-so cops-n-robbers film. Nothing that you haven't seen before. Some of the action's good, and a chase after one of the heists is particularly good. But in a film of 2 hours that's not much to boast about. Some of the photography was good. The script was a bit flat. Jeremy Renner's talents were wasted in this film.

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Breezy said...

Posted on Oct 03 2010 00:33 Genuinely a good film, with great dialogue, an original script, and honest performance. I completely dug this movie, and the two hours flew bye, which tells you all you need to know.

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Patsy Boyle said...

Posted on Sep 30 2010 20:39 Just watch this film, loved it, finally something that gives you a rush, but I dont like to see Benny Boy as a bad boy, although he did a great job.

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Nick Ryan said...

Posted on Sep 28 2010 20:41 The Town is the best film i've seen this year - seen it twice and intend to see it again! Ignore the negative comments characterisation is compelling & not a duff performance in the film. Jeremy Renner stands out as Affleck's unbalanced friend. People with short attention spans will find it 'boring' those who have better things to do than " watch paint dry" see a film that delivers a 1st class heist movie with great action scenes well directed by Affleck. See it on the big screen then see it again! This film does not try to be 'Heat' so criticising a film for not matching up seems redundant.

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critique said...

Posted on Sep 28 2010 19:56 Competent cops n robbers fare, scoring highly on action but falling down on characterisation and sometimes taking its self a little too seriously. Unlike Dave O`Brien, I was rooting for Affleck`s violent criminal to lose the girl and his liberty!

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minusone said...

Posted on Sep 28 2010 17:17 I wrote in haste and now repent. I agree with the last two comments.

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Matt Riley said...

Posted on Sep 28 2010 07:49 These posts are terrible reviews (including the main one). The previous post to mine said it very correctly: Affleck IS DEFINITELY the one who pulls the trigger several times. And to suggest the FBI agent's next logical role is in a S&TC sequal doesn't even make sense. The movie did what it set out to do, and for that, I loved it.

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