Friday, September 17, 2010

The Town: movie review



The Town" is about a gang of thieves from the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown, which reportedly has produced more bank and armored-car robbers than anywhere else in the country. Who said there's no such thing as robust job creation in America?

Directed by Ben Affleck, who also stars as robber ringleader Doug MacRay, "The Town" is often fine around the edges but mushy at its core. The script by Affleck, Peter Craig, and Aaron Stockard, based on the novel "Prince of Thieves" by Chuck Hogan, draws less on life than on other, similarly themed movies, especially "The Departed." It draws even more on TV cop shows. (The fact that the film makes this explicit by giving Doug a speech about his


fascination with the "CSI:" series does not lessen the familiarity.)

The tough-on-the-outside, kind-hearted-on-the-inside Doug is matched by Claire (Rebecca Hall), the bank manager who is taken hostage by his crew (disguised as goblins) and then released unharmed. He subsequently seeks her out and romances her without her being aware that he was her captor.

Sweet-souled Claire, with her yen for gardening and her volunteer work with children, represents a better life for Doug and so, as we've seen so many times before in hard-boiled crime movies, the good-bad guy decides that after one last job he's out of the crook's life forever.

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