The Town

Located in the outskirts of the “Tea Party” city of Boston is a small hamlet called Charlestown. “The Town” is famous, or should I say infamous for producing the maximum number of criminals in the Boston area. The saying goes, “It’s a family business – passed on from father to son”. And in this small hamlet stay Doug McRay (Ben Affleck), James “Jem” Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), Albert 'Gloansy' Magloan (Slaine) and Desmond Elden (Owen Burke) – a gang of bank robbers masterminded by MacRay and controlled by Fergus 'Fergie' Colm (Pete Postlethwaite) a.k.a the Florist. Between the Florist and MacRay 4 robberies have been masterminded to date. Obviously the florist keeps a cut from the job. The FBI is of course onto their backsides but there is absolutely no proof of their involvement with anything. The gang is smart enough to not leave any fingerprints. They either torch anything that they have touched or spray the place with chemicals to not leave any DNA traces either. And also burn any tapes that may have recorded the entire activity. This obviously leaves FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) quite frustrated.


Frustrated till they pull off their next piece of work. They go about the heist dressed as Skeletors but almost get caught this time around. The Bank Manager, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) manages to sound a fire alarm. She also manages to see the tattoo of a cartoon character on Jem’s neck. The gang is about to leave but on 2nd thoughts decide to take Claire along with them as some sort of a hostage if the cops catch up with them on the way out. Nothing untoward happens though and a blindfolded Claire is dropped off @ the beach with a warning against talking to the cops or the FBI. For some reason the gang also keeps her license. A highly traumatized Claire is then interviewed by Agent Frawley. Still reeling under the stress of the robbery, she divulges very little. She specifically leaves out the part of the tattoo.

In the meantime, our anti-heroes are back @ their rendezvous point and realize that Claire stays barely 4 blocks away from Charlestown. Panic starts setting in and Jem is all set to dispose her off. But better sense prevails and McRay asks the gang to calm down and focus on the next job which he secretly wants to be his last. He takes the onus of following Claire to check on whether she finds her way back to the cops. He also befriends her in the bargain to try and figure out what she has been speaking to the cops about. Now there is no points for guessing that there is a soft corner that MacRay has a really soft spot for the Bank Manager ever since the robbery was in progress. For a seasoned Bank Robber it was quiet surprising that he lets himself fall for the victim. Not sure what they call this. But the reverse is the “Stockholm Syndrome”.

The Town is Ben Affleck’s 2nd directorial venture. His first being an equally intense drama starring his brother Casey Affleck. He continues with his style of movie making which is set against a dark easy going background and deals with a topic that is extremely socially relevant. Must give him credit in the direction department. Definitely not Oscar worthy as on date but definitely loads of potential in there. Lets put it this way, he is a much better director than an actor. He has definitely done his best to squeeze out as much possible from the not so famous cast. He also keeps the movie going with very little or no low points. There could have been some more effort made on consistency. For e.g. Blake Lively plays the role of Doug’s ex Krista Coughlin. For the kind of set up the Charlestown has, one would not expect Krista to have immaculately manicured and painted nails. Maybe I am wrong but instances like these stick out like a sore thumb in an otherwise well made & compact movie. In the acting department, I thought Jeremy Renner’s performance was quite noteworthy. The rest of the cast barely made it. And yes ladies – you can drool over Affleck’s 8 packs for all of 3.5 seconds during the movie. Overall, I give this a 6.5 on 10.