The Town

Ben Affleck. Well, he has those sort of classic old Hollywood good looks doesn't he? And he and Matt Damon were so darn cute accepting that Oscar for Good Will Hunting. And then.... welllll, things kinda went down hill to the tune of ... wince... Pearl Harbor. But then 2007 and Gone Baby Gone comes around and YAY, it seems Ben is back writing and belongs in the Directors chair after all and we can forgive all those tedious movies and be glad he found his true calling and we'll just let Casey be the actor in the family. Apparently wishful thinking. Cuz Ben not only co-wrote the screenplay and directed The Town. He acts in it.

The Town refers to Charlestown, a neighborhood of Boston notorious for producing thieves... and most specifically the sort who specialize in bank robbery and the like. Affleck plays Doug MacRay, the leader of a gang of loyal thugs who, like their daddies a fore them, rob banks. Pursuing some loose ends after a not so perfect job, Doug falls for the bank manager, but of course his buddies need him for the BIG SCORE. Car chases and shootouts ensue. yadda yadda yadda.

Despite the decent Boston accents that everyone handles acceptably - despite great character actors Pete Postelwaite and Chris Cooper in tiny underutilized roles - despite the fact that somehow Jeremy Renner managed to snaggle a nomination for Best Supporting (ensuring that he will continue to be typecast as a sociopath ad infinitum,) this is a predictable heist movie with extraneous amounts of foul language and unnecessary violence making up for anything close to character development. By the time the inevitable happens, I couldn't care less who was going to make it out alive. See the self congratulatory website here.