The Town Gives Great Tour of Criminal Element By Art Byrd

Bank heist movies seem to be the rage of late. First came Takers, now The Town seeks to entertain audiences with a story about bank robbers in Boston. 

The movie stars and is directed by actor Ben Affleck. He plays Doug, a guy with a job at a gravel company who moonlights as a bank robber. Doug and his career-criminal friend, Jem, played by dynamic hot head Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker), rob banks with a precision and intelligence you would expect from Harvard graduates --not from guys who seem to have a degree in street crime.

The opening sequence has Doug, Jem and two other members of their crew robbing a Boston bank. They definitely know what they are doing; their moves are well planned as they microwave the security tapes and pour bleach all over the bank to ruin traces of DNA.

During the robbery, the crew takes Claire, a bank manager played by Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), hostage because the silent alarm was set off and they want her as negotiating tool if necessary.  Later, the crew releases Claire near a river.

Now enters FBI agent Frawley, played by Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, to talk with Claire and investigate the bank robbery. Hamm is very good with his pit-bull attitude in trying to find the bank robbers.

Jem is worried that Claire can identify them because she lives in their neighborhood. He wants to hurt Claire, where Doug wants to try another approach. Doug follows Claire and gets her routine as if he is scoping out a bank job.

Finally, he makes contact with her at a Laundromat. They start to get to know each other. Doug starts to fall for Claire and she for him. She has no idea that Doug is one of the crew that took her hostage, which was a nice twist by Affleck.

Agent Flawley is gathering information on Doug, Jem and the others. Now, he must catch them in the act.

Meanwhile, Fergus “Fergie” Colm, a local crime boss played by Pete Postlethwaite, has a flower shop where he actually cuts flowers. He wants the crew to do another heist.

Doug wants to leave Boston with Claire and doesn’t want anything to do with the upcoming job. But Fergie threatens Doug because he knows about his relationship with Claire. With Claire in possible danger, Doug agrees to do the job but has a bad feeling about it.

The job is not at a bank but targets concession money at Boston’s Fenway Park baseball stadium. Of course, things go wrong during the heist. The crew is trapped. The highlight of this movie is the shootout scene with the crew and law enforcement. It was so realistic, you felt you were in the middle of the shooting. Bullets chipping walls and spilling into the actor’s eyes.

One of the standout performances in the movie is from beautiful Blake Lively (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, TV’s Gossip Girl) as Krista, a single mom with an Oxycontin addiction. She and Doug had an on-and-off relationship. She had the Boston accent and a look that took her natural beauty down a couple notches.

The Town is a very stylish film with a great car chase scene, realistic bank and stadium robberies.

The movie’s results are predictable with who dies and lives, but the ending has interesting twist with a softness to it which is a relief after the extreme hardness throughout the film.

The Town gives an interesting look at the kind of people you don’t want to bank on. 

Edited by Michele Ristich Gatts