The Town

When Ben Affleck went home to direct his debut fea­ture, Gone Baby Gone, it was seen as a some­what unex­pect­ed career move. The result, of course, was earth shat­ter­ing; earn­ing Affleck artis­tic clout and res­ur­rect­ing his act­ing career in one deaf­en­ing state­ment of intent. Three years on and expec­ta­tion for Affleck’s direc­to­r­i­al fol­low-up is under­stand­ably high. Too high, perhaps.

Once again Affleck is back in Boston, this time return­ing to the tough streets of Charlestown, the self-pro­claimed bank-job cap­i­tal of the world. It’s here we meet life­long friends and pard­naas Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) and James ​‘Jem’ Cough­lin (Jere­my Ren­ner). They’re Boston born and breed, and they’re about to leave their mark on a Cam­bridge bank and its man­ag­er Claire Keesey (Rebec­ca Hall).

With the heat on, the boys take Claire hostage to secure their get­away. It’s a rash move, and one which comes back to haunt them when Claire’s close prox­im­i­ty to their illic­it oper­a­tion is revealed. As the only wit­ness able to tes­ti­fy against them, Jem sees Claire as a risk and decides she needs to be ​‘tak­en care of’. Doug steps up. And takes care of it. In his own way…

All stub­ble and swag­ger, The Town plays out in typ­i­cal­ly testos­terone-charged fash­ion, as the feds (led by a hard-talk­ing Jon Hamm, who’s dis­tin­guished by his badge and an urbane side-part­ing, but nev­er the good guy) close in on the gang’s ruth­less oper­a­tion. Despite deliv­er­ing some blis­ter­ing set pieces, aug­ment­ed by a fierce­ly loud sound design, how­ev­er, The Town lacks the char­ac­ter tex­ture that has made the Boston-set crime thriller such a promi­nent sub-genre in recent years.

Where Gone Baby Gone and Scorsese’s The Depart­ed made the most of the city’s strong cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, The Town is more focused on roman­tic sub­plots that are always doomed from the start. As such loca­tion shots of Fen­way Park and Bunker Hill seem shoe­horned in, while the more inter­est­ing char­ac­ter back­sto­ries – a local FBI agent who turned his back on Charlestown, Doug’s trou­bled rela­tion­ship with his inmate father – are left underdeveloped.

Again Affleck has adapt­ed his film from an acclaimed Boston-set nov­el (Chuck Hogan’s ​‘Prince of Thieves’), but this time the ​‘Town­ies’, cops and cons alike, just aren’t as real. The Town’s true colours are there, but you’ll have to scratch beneath a lay­er of Hol­ly­wood fluff to see them. Crime pays, chicks dig bad boys, the estranged ex will spoil the show, the livewire side­kick will go out in a show­er bul­lets and brim­stone; all these crime clichés and more are rein­forced to a fault.

Ulti­mate­ly when Ben Affleck the direc­tor does the talk­ing, The Town is first rate. But as the film’s cring­ing­ly ill-judged epi­logue shows, it’s the glimpses of Ben Affleck the movie star that lets the team down.