For his second stint in the director’s chair, he’s back in
the city’s working-class streets, again adapting a crime novel. As with the
impressive but flawed “Gone Baby Gone,” a blue-collar authenticity invigorates “The
Town,” the story of a young criminal who is ready to change his life — after
that one last job.
Affleck gets the tribalism of Boston’s traditionally
Irish-American enclaves; it’s a defining force in his characters’ lives. But
for all their well-played grit, those characters resolutely remain types, and
for all the well-choreographed action, the outcome doesn’t matter nearly as
much as it should. When the Warner Bros. release bows September 17, following
its out-of-competition premiere at the Venice Film Festival, its cast and the
promise of a grown-up thriller will nonetheless draw many of the same filmgoers
who put “The American” atop the box office.
Based on Chuck Hogan’s “Prince of Thieves,” the drama
revolves around the neighborhood of Charlestown, where, onscreen titles
explain, robbery is a lifelong trade, passed down through the generations. Doug
MacRay (Affleck) has been knocking over banks and armored trucks for as long as
he can remember. His partner in crime is hothead James “Jem” Coughlin (Jeremy
Renner), a childhood friend who increasingly uses their bond as emotional
blackmail and whose hair-trigger violence escalates the danger of their work.
In the first adrenaline-rush action set piece, Jem brutally
beats a bank employee during a heist and impulsively takes a hostage, branch
manager Claire (Rebecca Hall). But kidnapping is not the boys’ game, and they
quickly release her, only to discover that she’s a local girl, albeit one
living in the neighborhood’s gentrified quarters. Even if she could identify
the masked robbers, Claire’s not eager to cooperate with FBI Special Agent
Frawley (Jon Hamm), who is determined to crack the case. Jem is antsy to make
sure she won’t talk, but Doug insists he’ll take care of it.
What he does is fall for her, and she for him. However
far-fetched the connection, Affleck and the versatile Hall make it work, at
least for a while. As director, he orchestrates a few terrifically tense
sequences built upon his character’s secret: first, when Doug sizes up Claire
in a Laundromat, then when he advises her on how to deal with the FBI - “You’re
the one who’s vulnerable” - and especially during a scene at an outdoor cafe,
where Jem interrupts a date and susses out the situation with more than a
suggestion of menace.
As our rooting interest, Affleck is sympathetic, if not
compelling. Caught between old-school loyalty and the promise of something
beyond Charlestown, Doug belongs to the lineage of honorable crooks, a movie
staple. He represents the possibility of reform. His visit to an AA meeting is
dealt with in a refreshingly succinct manner and provides more evidence of the
filmmaker’s eye for local faces.
The script, credited to Peter Craig, Affleck and Aaron
Stockard, taps into the right veins of provincialism and sarcasm but moves less
surely between reckless action and intimate drama. Doug’s moral distance from
the accelerating brutality of his gang’s jobs, and especially from Jem’s
volatility — so evident in Renner’s every move - is meant to up the stakes, and
a third-act heist at Fenway Park just looks crazy. Meting out pieces of Doug’s
backstory — complete with a brief and bracing turn by Chris Cooper as his
father - isn’t enough. You feel the storytelling wheels turning, not the
intended visceral punch.
It takes Hamm a while to dig into his stock-character lawman
and shake off the specter of Don Draper. He has to fight his way through some
unconvincing tough-cop dialogue, but as the story proceeds and his 5 o’clock
shadow deepens, he makes a bit of wiseass talk sing, as does Affleck, during an
interrogation scene. In the smaller role of a Boston detective, Titus Welliver
is persuasive, and Blake Lively fully embraces the messiness of Doug’s
dissolute sometime girlfriend. As the Charlestown equivalent of a Mafia don,
Pete Postlethwaite capitalizes on the chance to pare the leaves from
long-stemmed roses while delivering deadly ultimatums.
Whether zeroing in on a tete-a-tete or following a
high-velocity chase through narrow streets built for another century, Robert
Elswit’s fluent widescreen camerawork and Dylan Tichenor’s editing are strong
components, as are all the design contributions. The treacly score by Harry
Gregson-Williams and David Buckley, on the other hand, tends to distract rather
than enhance.
Affleck excels at capturing the insularity of the locale.
BlackBerries and OxyContin show up, but otherwise this might be the ‘70s. He
includes a nod to that decade’s Boston-set “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” a
melancholy crime drama that would have laughed this movie’s sentimental ending
right into the Charles River.
