A film review by Craig J. Koban September 27, 2010 |
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Rank: #21 |
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THE TOWN
Doug MacRay: Ben Affleck / Claire Keesey: Rebecca Hall / Agent
Frawley: Jon Hamm / Jem: Jeremy Renner / Krista: Blake
Lively / Dino: Titus Welliver / Fergus: Pete Postlethwaite / Stephen
MacRay: Chris Cooper |
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After
a strong series of supporting performances (see HOLLYWOODLAND
and STATE OF PLAY) followed by his
critically lauded directorial debut in 2007’s masterful GONE
BABY GONE (making my Ten Best list of that year), Affleck can now
be regarded as a filmmaker with a singular voice and an efficient aesthetic
with the release of THE TOWN, his sophomore effort behind the camera, in
turn based on the Chuck Hogan novel PRINCE OF THIEVES.
The 38-year-old, Cambridge, Massachusetts-bred performer
unequivocally proves now that GONE BABY GONE was no rookie fluke, as his
second film fully confirms Affleck as noteworthy director to be reckoned
with. What
he does so resoundingly well in both of his films is create a level of
stark immediacy and gritty verisimilitude with his environmental muse,
Boston (or should I say “Bah-ston”).
Great writers write what they know, and great directors, I feel,
film what they know, and Affleck lovingly pays the type of attention to
detail for his hometown that has rarely been seen before in the movies.
Mixed in with his bravura handling of the Boston locales is the
manner that Affleck captures the milieu of tough talking Irish crooks
living within a larger microcosm of normal, everyday folk.
It’s that human dynamic that directors like Martin Scorsese –
with his deeply texturized portrayals of criminal life in New York – do
with an effortless swagger and innate comprehension, and Affleck displays
much of the same care and understanding for his subject matter.
THE TOWN is framed by the clash between urban criminals, those on
the side of the law that are after them, and the everyday innocent victims
that are affected by both entities, and the way Affleck captures the
cadence of this three-way relationship is enthralling. The
film is, at its core, a pulpy crime/heist thriller mixed with a romantic
melodrama and further mixed with a police procedural. It
ominously opens with title cards that indicate that one area of Boston,
Charleston, has a notorious reputation for spawning multi-generational bank
robbers and that this neighborhood is infamous for producing more bank and armored
car robberies in one square mile than anywhere else in America
(in actuality, the current 2010 FBI numbers for bank robberies in Massachusetts
pales in comparison to California, but I digress).
Nonetheless, the film’s main character, Doug MacRay (Affleck) is
from one such family with a dubious criminal reputation.
His father (Chris Cooper, serenely empowered in an all-too-brief
cameo) is serving multiple life sentences for murder and robbery, and it
appears that the apple has not fallen too far from the family tree.
Doug, whether instinctually or not, is just continuing the ol’
family trade of stealing money. He,
like his father, is intrinsically good at robbing banks and, unlike his
father, he has managed to elude the law at every turn.
His crew is made up of his best friends: There is Gloansy Magloan (Slaine), Desmond Elden (Owen Burke)
and his closet BFF, James “Gem” Coughlin (Jeremy Renner, following up
his stellar work in THE HURT LOCKER
with another portrayal that dives into manic ferocity and perverted inner
drive). Doug is the grounded
voice of reason of the quartet and essentially is the planner, whereas Gem
is hot headed, trigger happy, and a proverbial loose cannon that can snap
with little advance provocation. Gem
has a reason for being twitchy and distrustful of nearly everyone around
him: he has served nine years in the slammer for murder and definitely
does not want to go back. It
is Gem’s crazed level of self-preservation and disregard for human life
in general that makes Doug feel uneasy, but he knows that Gem makes a worthy
team member nonetheless. However,
Gem does make forbidden mistakes on team missions, which include
elaborately constructed heist jobs that show the team meticulously
disguising themselves and eroding all forms of DNA and print evidence from
the scene (they often wet the scene with Bleach and detergents and later
torch the getaway cars). One
mission, shown early in the film, is typified by costly errors: Gem, at one
point, viciously beats a bank manager because he believed he tripped a
silent alarm and, to make matters worse, he takes a hostage, Claire Keesey
(the lovely Rebecca Hall), also a bank employee.
When Doug’s team is in the clear, they let her go, but beforehand
they take her driver’s license and threaten her if she were to ever go to the
Feds. Although
Claire never actually sees the faces of the Doug’s crew, Gem is still
deeply fidgety and suspicious that she will “squeal” to the coppers. Doug decides to intervene to appease his friend’s worries
and takes it upon himself to do some recognizance work and follows Claire.
The more he tracks her, though, the more drawn to her he becomes.
They have a very awkward meet-cute at a laundry mat and, from that
point onward, they begin to see more and more of each other, at least
until Doug gets enough information from her to feel confident that she will
not be able to ever identify his crew.
There are two problems that befall Doug’s clandestine
mission: he is falling in love with Claire and a steely-eyed and
ferociously determined FBI agent named Adam Frawley (MAD MEN’s stalwart
and ruggedly dependable John Hamm) is hot on his heels.
Frawley does not have enough evidence to convict, but through old
school detective work and some ingenuity, he slowly begins to make a case. As
stated, the one area where Affleck is most assured is the way
he makes his Boston locales feel both atmospheric and resonate with a palpable level of coarse
authenticity; he has a manner of building his settings to feel real and
inhabited. One area that
Affleck really succeeds in is the way he is able to balance the film’s
gripping human drama and fever-pitched action, which is a delicate
dichotomy to pull off effectively. What
he is able to muster – that so many other “experienced” directors are
incapable of – is to create visceral scenes of thrilling mayhem without
sacrificing clarity and symmetry. He is able to create the requisite sensation of tension and
urgency to the action scenes in the film, but he is able to make them
lean, economical, and precise: we can make out the action and are not
bombarded with visual and editorial overkill, which is a welcome
diversion. Just
consider the two heist sequences that bookend the film: the first being
the opening robbery, which is revealed with an efficiency, economy, and a
sense of exemplary pacing, and the second – a wonderfully executed heist
at Boston’s baseball cathedral, Fenway Park, no less – is a kinetic
and thrillingly captivating sequence that deserves worthy comparisons to
the center piece gun battle of Michael Mann’s HEAT.
Some critics have complained about how action oriented THE TOWN is,
but when moments like this are delineated and captured with such
consummate skill and confidence as they are here, they emerge as agreeable
additions. That
is not to say that Affleck can’t handle the smaller scale, internalized
moments between characters. There
is one particular scene – involving three characters at an outdoor
bistro – that would have made Hitchcock proud.
Doug is enjoying an afternoon lunch with Claire until Gem
shows up to crash it. The
tension here is threefold, and Affleck mercilessly plays it up for the
audiences: Firstly, Doug
knows that Claire saw Gem’s rear-neck tattoo at the scene of the bank
robbery and could use it to identify him, but Claire does not know that
Doug and Gem are the robbers, so Doug tries to discretely find ways of
ensuring that Claire does not see the tattoo.
Secondly, Gem knows that Doug is monitoring Claire, but is angered
when he sees the two out on what appears to be a date. Thirdly, the audience knows everything, which builds up
the dread and anxiety even further. You
will not likely find a more quietly suspenseful scene set within modest
settings in another film all year. Affleck,
with GONE BABY GONE and now here, also shows what an adept he is as an
actors-director, and the whole cast is unwaveringly stellar.
Affleck himself has never been so restrained and focused in a role
and his interplay with Rebecca Hall (evoking a beautiful, conflicted, and wounded figure) is strong. John
Hamm is pitch perfect as the FBI agent willing to go to any length –
ethical or not – to capture his prey (he is one of the great,
understated performers; he acts by almost not acting or drawing attention
to himself). Pete
Postlethwaite,
playing a flouriest that happens to be the Godfather of Doug’s team’s
robberies and has a dark past with Doug’s family, creates an
unrelentingly creepy antagonist of reptilian hostility.
Perhaps most surprising is GOSSIP GIRL’s Blake Lively, who
astonishingly creates a completely believable drug-addicted, love sick,
and lonely single mother that Doug is trying to leave behind; she is never
been so liberatingly and unnervingly raw. Special
props, though, need to be given to Jeremy Renner, an actor with an almost
unmatchable animal magnetism and charisma. Watching him inhabit his role as an Iraq War bomb diffuser in
THE HURT LOCKER highlighted him as a performer with a untamed, almost
hypnotic power, and he creates an even more tortured and dangerously
unstable sociopath here as Gem. Watching
Renner here I seem oddly reminded of a young James Cagney in so far that
both actors can tap into their roles’ goofball and dopey eyed charm and
vindictively fast talking and short fused temperaments.
Renner is simply a knockout here and will certainly garner his
second straight Oscar nomination. I
read how one critic has compared Affleck to another actor-turned-director,
Clint Eastwood. Is that type
of praise too hyperbolic at this early point in Affleck’s
career? I don’t think so,
seeing as the comparisons are just: both have a directing style that’s
elegantly sparse, simply designed, and modestly executed without feeling
overdone; both are able to foster unvaryingly excellent performances from their actors; and both have a natural command of storytelling and pacing.
However,
having said all of that, THE TOWN falls short of masterpiece status in a
few ways: the film is a straightforward crime/police procedural that
contains many clichés seen before (the innocent woman caught between her
love of the criminal and her civic duty to turn him in and the “one last job
before going clean” element of the crook) and the film’s conclusion
– which ends with an unsatisfying thud – seems rushed, surprising
considering the film’s robust 130 minute running time.
Finally, THE TOWN is simply not as fascinatingly challenging to
viewers on a moral level as GONE BAY GONE, a film that contained
unsettling themes and ethical quandaries that plagued me days after I saw
it. Yet, THE TOWN is still a
triumphant rallying cry for Affleck, both the actor and director, who has
long been searching to reclaim some well-deserved recognition from critics
and peers alike. Well, Benny,
your first two films have garnered seven and a half out of a possible
eight stars from me. Mission accomplished, sir. |
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