Warner Bros. | 2010 | 125 mins. | R
Just a few years ago, it looked like Ben Affleck might have thrown away much of a promising career. After scoring an Academy Award (with Matt Damon) for writing 1998’s Good Will Hunting, he spent several years trying to be an action star and superhero, both greeted less then enthusiastically. Then, he became known more for his personal life than his work when he started dating Jennifer Lopez. The couple were referred to as “Bennifer” in the press. Finally, looking to get his career back on track, Affleck made his directorial debut with 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, which was a critical success.
Affleck has returned to the director’s chair (and his familiar spot in front of the camera), for The Town, based on Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves. Affleck plays Doug MacRay, a lifelong criminal in the Charlestown area of Boston. Though he robs banks and armored cars, he’s still pretty much a good man. He never wants to kill anyone during a robbery and works for a sand-and-gravel company every day. He is your basic movie antihero, the bad guy you root for. You get the feeling he’s been looking for someone to redeem him, to save him from himself.
Doug and his lifelong best friend Jim Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) have pulled several moderately successful heists, their crew rounded out by a couple of greasy-looking hoodlums named Albert (Slaine) and Desmond (Owen Burke). But while Jim is becoming increasingly violent and erratic, Doug is trying to scale it back. He attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. And after striking up a romance with a neighborhood girl named Claire (Rebecca Hall), he thinks he might want out of this lifestyle altogether.
In the first few minutes if the film, we see Doug and his crew execute a bank robbery; an alarm gets tripped, and Jim takes the manager of the bank hostage—the manager just happens to be Claire. They wore masks and she never saw their faces, so she has no idea about Doug’s involvement in the robbery.
At the same time, FBI agent Frawley (Jon Hamm) is hot on their trail. Wisely,The Town follows both sides of the law, and there’s as much thrill in seeing Frawley track down clues in pursuit of the bank robbers as there is in seeing the bank robbers evade him. A fantastically staged car chase later in the film splits our allegiances, as we’re unsure whether we want the hunters to catch their prey or not.
The screenplay, written by Affleck with Aaron Stanford, his collaborator on Gone Baby Gone, and Peter Craig is a solid one. Of particular note is the way the way the story quietly acknowledges the subtle class dynamic between the two protagonists, but doesn’t really comment on it. This approach allows viewers to draw some of their own conclusions. Just as he did in Gone Baby Gone, Affleck paints a real sense of place with Charlestown. Colorful characters played by the likes of Blake Lively and Pete Postlethwaite give it a gritty authenticity.
Warner has transferred The Town on to Blu-ray using the 2.40:1 ratio. The image sometimes displays an intended iron-blue tinge, well captured by the MPEG-4 codec. Definition is good, with excellent close-ups. Colors are fine, with a gritty, slightly glassy look to them, set off by deep black levels. And outdoor scenes are especially sharp and bright.
Using lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, the audio engineers make the most of a soundtrack that has a lot of dialogue. The surrounds aren’t particularly active, but when they are, they are impressive during gunfights and car chases. The rest of the time, the viewer can enjoy a smooth, clear midrange, and extended frequency response, and a wide front-channel stereo spread.
The Blu-ray disc includes both the R-rated theatrical version (125 minutes) and the unrated extended cut (153 minutes) of the movie, plus several special features. We geta pair of audio commentaries by director-star Ben Affleck on both versions of the film. Next is a series of “Focus Points,” short, behind-the-scenes featurettes that the viewer can watch during the movie or separately. Their titles are self-explanatory: “The Cathedral of Boston,” “Nuns with Guns: Filming in the North End,” “The Real People of the Town,” “Pulling Off the Perfect Heist,” “Ben Affleck: Director and Actor,” and “The Town.”
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