I was a huge fan of Gone, Baby, Gone and was impressed as everybody at Ben Affleck's directorial debut. Say what you want about the man's acting (which I don't think is atrocious as everybody else does, but he has picked a lot of bad roles) but he did a fantastic job with Gone, Baby, Gone. So I was pumped to see him back behind the camera again but in front of it...not so much. It's not that I don't think he's a decent actor, but it's really hard to get all his bad roles out of my head. I mean he's been in some real stinkers and as unfair as it is, those images are hard to not carry over from film to film. So I was mildly surprised to see the amazing reviews The Town was getting (which currently stands at a 94% on RT). Critics as a whole tend to pick on certain people (Kevin Smith) and with Affleck being one of them, I assumed the great reviews were indicative of a great film.
A great film this was not. I walked out of the theater with an overbearing feeling of "meh" about the entire thing. While I realize a grunt is not the best way to critique a film, I think it's very telling about the movie as a whole. First for the positives. The acting and directing were both solid. Affleck didn't blow me away or anything, but he did a good job as the straight man and didn't necessarily rely on his acting chops to carry the movie. It seems like he knows his strengths and weaknesses as an actor, so fair enough. Jeremy Renner was pretty good too. I'm not going as far to say that he had created a classic character or anything but he was by far the most interesting one in this film. He was pretty much a sociopathic gunman who let his insanity get in the way of a lot of heists they have to pull off. There was one scene where he interrupts Affleck's character at a lunch that you may have heard about. I was told it was "the" scene in the movie (much like I heard about the pencil scene before seeing The Dark Knight) and while it was nowhere near as amazing as I'd heard, it was rather nervewracking and did a good job of showing off the insanity of Renner's character. Jon Hamm was of course brilliant as always. For the love of god, can Warners stop fucking around and just throw the blue/red tights and the 'S' on this man's chest already. Jesus, everytime he walked into frame the thought would blare through my head "OMG he should totally play Superman." Okay, digression over. The biggest surprise of the movie for me was Blake Lively. Not having seen a frame of Gossip Girl, it's pretty easy to imagine that she wasn't exactly burning up the screen on that show. So I was rather surprised to see her transform from the perfect girl image she has into this trashy street girl.
My biggest problem with the movie was the horribly boring story. Judging from the trailer, I assumed it would be a crime drama/bank heist movie with a little something to it. It was that, minus the little something to it. The entire time I kept waiting for the hammer to fall and the 'oh shit' moment that made it as amazing as everyone said it was. But it never happened. It was one of those movies where your left angrily thinking "that's it?!?!?!?!?!" as the screen fades to black. The ending fell completely flat. What bugged me the most was the unrealistic nature of it all. Now I realize it's a movie and some things aren't going to be 100% believable. I get that. But it was just too much here. Okay take Affleck's relationship with Rebecca Hall for example. Hall eventually finds out that he's one of the guys that robs her and has a dilemma; to tell the feds or not. Initially she tells him just to GTFO and doesn't wanna deal with any legal aspects of it. Then Jon Hamm comes along and seemingly convinces her to lure him into a trap. Only she doesn't. Her love (which was never actually stated by either character) for him was too strong to lock him away. Which would work if they were married or at least been in a relationship for what couldn't have been more than 3 months. Affleck's character was a giant scumbag and in any real life situation the girl would say 'fuck this guy' and hand him over to the feds. Oddly enough the only character who did the right/realistic thing was the character most portrayed as a dumb whore (Lively). At the tail end during Affleck's voiceover he has a line something like "we all pay for what we've done" but he dealt with no consequences for his actions. He robbed banks, treated a woman he supposed loved like shit, shot at (and assumedly killed) tons of cops, and all he has to suffer through is a bearded vacation in Florida? The sheer ridiculousness of what the ending was trying to say was enough to make me dislike this movie.
Another problem with the lack of depth. The story had nothing to it. It was simply about guys robbing banks and trying not to get caught. That gets old after a while and was the main reason why this came across as so boring. Instead of a big, climactic third act what we got was a job-gone-wrong and Affleck's character escaping. Nothing of any real weight or consequence happened. It annoyed me that Affleck got away. He shouldn't have. That would never in a million years happen. There were cops literally swarming Fenway Park and he simply walked away. That's not a proper ending to a crime drama like this. It was like The Departed minus everything good about it. The characters, while good, failed to really spark any interest and the same could be applied to the movie as a whole. There was just nothing memorable or really exciting about any of it. To sum up, spend your money instead an a much deserved additional viewing of Inception. Moving on to Line of the Week. There weren't a ton of negative reviews out there (which is usually where the shitty blurbs come from) but I managed to find a blurb that dripped with douchiness. It comes from Dana Stevens at Slate, she says, "an autopsy for The Town would list multiple causes of death." ......I don't even know what to say here. I agree with her, but I'm much more offended by the fact that she thought that was a witty and biting statement than anything I saw with this movie. Yes, there were multiple things wrong with the movie. Why don't you just say that instead of coming up with some horrible line that you hope people will chuckle at? Well nobody's chuckling and you look like a douche.
Overall score: 5 out of 10
Bottom line: Though Affleck's film was filled with gunfire, Skeletor masks, and Jon Hamm, The Town still fails to draw any type of excitement throughout it's plodding, anticlimactic story and bloated 130 minute runtime.
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