The Town (2010)

Director: Ben Affleck

Starring: Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall.

A proficient group of thieves rob a bank and hold Claire, the assistant manager, hostage. Things begin to get complicated when one of the crew members falls in love with Claire.

My review for ‘The Town’ could be summarized in a single word: YAWN.

The film is a about bank robbers, and the town in question is Charlestown, where bank robbery is a trade. Ben Affleck stars as bank robber, Doug MacRay, a member of a gang of four who regularly robs banks. I’m not going to bore you with the details (hell, I’m bored enough with this movie!!), so here goes.  

‘The Town’ has a good opening sequence, but then moves incredibly slow from there for the sake of the romance interest. I actually got so bored waiting for something to happen that I found myself fondling with the forward button on the remote. I only became interested again about an hour into the movie when the next robbery took place, but in a whiff the action was all over.

There are two or three good action sequences, but keeping in mind this is a 2 ½ hour movie, that’s not saying much. There’s a heck of a lot of talking, talking, talking in between. And quite frankly, it wasn’t interesting since most of it was about this stupid unconvincing ‘love story’.

Doug comes across as sincere and is made out to be the film’s hero, but when he gets boxed in, he goes trigger happy firing blindly (with a machine gun) at policemen (the good guys, let me remind you!), with no consideration whatsoever for human life. Doug’s close friend, James (Jeremy Renner) is pure evil and deserved his fate.

If this wasn’t based on fact, I would have hated the film’s ending. But, having researched the actual events, the film is true to these events. It still makes for a boring movie with a dissatisfying ending.

‘The Town’ earned $154 million on a $37 million budget and received several award nominations, including an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Jeremy Renner).

Would I watch it again? No.