The Case for BosTownies

The Town is a pretty self conscious film, as illustrated by the fact that a few minutes into the end credits, an apologetic note comes up saying "while there are lots of criminals in Charlestown, not everyone's a criminal, and in fact there are some nice people there, who hopefully won't mind that this film is all about the criminals and not them". But then, I had the sense the film was aiming (and missing) for something with a lot of depth when there was a rather pointless reference to an Eskimo, which almost automatically had me reaching for my 3D glasses and spaghetti with lots of oregano (come on, someone HAS to get that reference).

Not that the Town is bad. I have heard that this film has been compared with the Wire, which is actually a very pale comparison but probably more "now" relevant than comparison with the film Heat, which I think is more apt, though The Town does not quite live up to that excellent standard either. So it is good, but far from those fantastic benchmarks.

Despite the awesome cast and beautiful cinematography, I think that there are two things holding the film back: the director and the lead actor. It is quite convenient then that both of these are actually the same person. Square jawed Ben Affleck, who hired a personal trainer (say the credits) for about 5 seconds of him shirtless (the money was well spent, it has to be said), plays an arrogant git really well. It's a shame then that his character in the Town is meant to be restrained, reflective and torn, because Affleck is not very good at pulling that character off at all.

I imagine the directorial advice to all the actors was: be serious. Everyone is steadfastly hard and manly, except for the women, who are allowed (and almost expected) to fall apart. There are a massive number of subplots all related to Affleck's character and none of them are given a lot of breathing room, which is just as well as the heaviest monologues are delivered by Affleck and seem to come out of nowhere and so end up with next to no emotional resonance.

Wow, this is all pretty negative thus far! However, once you get past the slow tedium of what passes for character development, the rest of the film stacks up nicely. The gorgeous Rebecca Hall as Affleck's love interest (ignore quite how they get together - this is more supposed "character development") lights up the screen every time she appears, and Mad Men's John Hamm is the most serious of all the men, playing as he does the Law Man determined to bring the Charlestown criminals to justice (with many exclamation marks after that).

The story progresses as you would expect it to (it's painfully obvious how things will go, though the plethora of red herrings occasionally had me guessing - for nought, it turned out), but it's all done with style and beautiful camera work.

Heat and The Wire kept one thing in mind, which made them work well: the bad guys may have lives and loves as tragic as the heroes, but they are bad guys. The Town (for me) makes the cardinal sin of trying to make Affleck's character a "good" guy, without him actually doing good things. You are meant to root for him, rather than respect and understand him but still recognise he is, at the end of the day, an intentionally bad man. After all the preceding action, this made the ending a bit of a let down, albeit a beautifully shot one.

Verdict: To rain so much on what is not a bad parade seems a bit harsh, but The Town reeks of Affleck's attempt at a serious, deep film and so gets a bit smelly whenever he is on the screen. The rest of the cast keep things more interesting, though they all must have suffered serious testosterone depletion at the end of filming. 6.5 nun masks out of 10.