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Two pals (director Ben Affleck, left, and Jeremy Renner) pose as cops to rob Fenway Park in the crime drama “The Town.” |
“The Town” is a slickly constructed heist thriller that dares to suggest that a person born in violence and brokenness can yearn for something better and can muster the strength to break the cultural and familial chains that have kept him a prisoner all of his life.
Yet, just like breaking up, breaking away is hard to do.
This impressive crime drama – directed with assured style and unexpected humor by star Ben Affleck – deftly balances an empathetic character study with the obligatory genre elements of cat-and-mouse game, car chases and lots of guns blasting away.
A harrowing car chase through the narrow streets of Boston is the showcase sequence in “The Town,” with Dylan Tichenor’s pulse-pumping editing every bit as tight as the tiny alleys negotiated by getaway cars and police cruisers.
One of the toughest denizens of this world is Doug MacRay (Affleck), a working-class guy in Charlestown, Mass., a piece of turf that we’re informed has spawned more bank robbers and armored-car plunderers than any place else in the country.
MacRay works as part of an elite team of local robbers who hit both banks and armored cars with impunity.
They strike with split-second accuracy. They know how to cover their tracks with bleach and fire. They know not to do anything that might compromise their capitalistic enterprise.
Until the day when MacRay, his lifelong pal Jim Coughlin (“Hurt Locker” star Jeremy Renner) and their team put on masks, storm a bank and force a pretty executive to open the safe.
Coughlin insists on taking the woman, Claire Keesey (a charismatic, fresh-faced Rebecca Hall), hostage just in case, although he releases her unharmed.
Worried that she might be able to identify the robbers, MacRay pretends to be a regular guy at a Laundromat. Just to, you know, check up on her. (Read more…)