The Town (2010)

The Town

We've all seen Heat, and The Town is molded around the exact same kind of story, with the added influence of neighborhood stories we've seen in movies like GoodFellas, Once Upon a Time in America, Sleepers and so on. As a director Ben Affleck does well again, but there's no doubt he's the weak link among the actors. Being the protagonist criminal, that's a huge problem. The other stand out weak acting link might be Blake Lively, or it might be she just pushes my buttons. I'm not sure she did as bad as it felt, but she sure didn't sell her character to me.

On the other end of the scale Jeremy Renner did once again impress, Rebecca Hall was brilliant as well and Jon Hamm did well in a less charismatic role than his Heat colleague got back in the days. Supporting roles like Postlewaite, Cooper and McLaughlin was also gentle on the eyes.

The Town is almost two and a half hours, and it doesn't quite manage to hold my attention throughout. While the opening sequence and several of the character developments are interesting enough, it soon feels like a lot of cliches are thrown into the ring. Affleck have the sad misfortune to follow up in a time when Mann have delivered a pure classic within the self established genre, The usual Suspects have delivered voice identification attempts a lot better, at least half a dozen movies have delivered the traditional end sequence and so on and so forth. It soon enough feels like old stories told all over again.

It's still quite well executed and I don't regret spending the time with the movie, but just don't expect to be blown away.