The Town (2010)

This is the not fucking around crew so get me something that looks like a print because this not fucking around thing is about to go both ways.

— FBI S.A. Adam Frawley

Oh, my goodness. You guys! It sucked being away from the blog and I missed you all. I’m not totally back, but I wanted to give you something to tide you over. Last weekend I went to movies to watch Ben Affleck’s latest directorial effort, The Town. Let me just say that I loathe this title. It’s so plain and simple. Feelings aside, I wanted to see this film because I was put off by Affleck’s first film, Gone Baby Gone. I wondered what his second effort would yield. All I can say is don’t  watch the threaterical trailer it would spoil it for you.

Going back to his roots, Affleck’s latest tells the story about the bank robbery capital of the world, a Irish majority suburb of Boston called Charlestown. Affleck plays Doug MacRay, the leader of a group of bank robbers who have honed their skills to pull off the perfect heist. Along for the ride is the loose cannon of group, Jem Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), the tech guy, Desmond Elden (Owen Burke) and the getaway driver, Gloansy Magloan (Slaine).

During one of the group’s robberies, Doug forces to the bank manager, Claire (Rebeeca Hall) to open up the bank vault. She is clearly frazzled because she has a semi-automatic gun pointed at her with a bunch of guys in scary Rastafarian-like masks. Doug almost takes pity on her and tells her to calm herself and she would not get hurt. When she opens the vault, things go awry when somebody is trying to open the front doors, and Jem’s short fuse cause craziness. Jem butts the assistant manager with his gun and takes Claire as a hostage.

Eventually, Jem lets Claire go not without taking her driver’s license, but Jem thinks that Claire will be liability and needs to be taken out, because she lives in their neighborhood and might go the cops. Doug doesn’t want that to happen, so he volunteers to track her town, because he has an inexplicable pull towards Claire. He lies to Jem that he couldn’t find her and starts to have a relationship with her.

Meanwhile, the FBI S.A. Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) and his partner, Dino Ciampa (Titus Welliver) are quick on the robbers trail and they would do anything to bring these guys down. Things gets complicated when Doug and Claire’s relationship is threatening the bonds of the brotherhood.

After a month and half of not watching a movie, I was feening for it like crack. Even though, I’ve never tried it. Don’t try it, kiddies out there. I had the choice  to see this, Easy A or try to see Scott Pilgrim vs The World. I think I might have picked the wrong film. I’m not saying that this movie is bad. It was fine. The first third of movie was boring as all get out. I was checking my watch a couple of times. Having a movie about the bad guys doesn’t work when you have Ben Affleck robbing banks for their boss, Fergie the Florist (Pete Postlethwaite)  and he is trying to get into Rebecca Hall’s pants. It didn’t gel with me.

I did enjoy the action elements of the film with the standoffs at the banks, the shootouts and the comic touches in the film, but the romance part of the film killed the movie for me. Besides that the ending of the movie is completely predictable that I knew who was going to survive and who wasn’t.

Judgment: This makes me want to revisit Gone Baby Gone again.

Rating: **1/2