The Town is a very plot driven film. Actions drive the story. And because of that, once things start moving, the film can’t slow down to spend a few minutes here and there on purely character moments. There are plenty of interesting characters in The Town, to be sure, but the greatness of Gone Baby Gone lies in its small, perfectly observed character moments (e.g. Amy Ryan in the backseat of Casey Affleck’s car talking about the people they knew in high school) that are largely absent from The Town. Without those moments, all that’s left is the plot. And while it’s a good one, there’s nothing in it that hasn’t been done before. It’s just usually not done this well. Thus, The Town ends up something of an oxymoron: a derivative film that’s also hugely entertaining.
What separates The Town from the many similar heist films is the careful attention to detail in the script. Aside from just getting the mechanics of the heists and the cat and mouse game between the thieves and the cops just right (hard enough on its own), the film is full of little details that make the whole thing run like clockwork.
Take, for instance, the moment where Affleck’s Doug MacRay asks his new girlfriend Claire (Rebecca Hall) if they can move from the couch to the bedroom because his uncle lives across the street and might be spying on them. It’s a small moment that goes by in a flash and if the audience thinks about it all, they probably think it’s just a line Doug’s using to get Claire into bed. But then later, after the film’s climactic heist, Doug uses his uncle’s apartment to watch Claire, checking to see whether or not she’s working with the FBI. The latter scene pays off the earlier one so precisely that you have to marvel at the construction of it.
There’s also the moment early in the film when Doug tells Claire that his aunt lives in Tangerine, Florida and when his mom went missing, he always assumed that’s where she’d gone. Like the line about his uncle, it’s such a small moment and so not the point of the story Doug’s telling that the audience barely notices it. But then, at the close of the film, when Claire finds a tangerine in a bag Doug left for her, that tiny moment is paid off in the most rewarding way possible.
Those are just two of the many small but perfectly constructed moments in The Town that make its plot work so flawlessly. Nothing seems contrived or obvious. The script doesn’t, as these sorts of films usually do, call all kinds of attention to moments that are going to be important later. Affleck trusts his audience enough to assume that they’ll be able to make the connections on their own. Maybe it’s just because this film is being released after a summer full of dumb, loud blockbusters, but The Town’s lack of handholding is really refreshing. Hell, Affleck even seems perfectly content with the fact that you can’t understand what people are saying half the time.
Though the film is focused almost entirely on plot mechanics and moving pieces into place so they can be paid off later, there are a couple small moments that really stand out and elevate The Town above similar films that just seek to tell their story. There’s the moment, at the end of the car chase in the middle of the film, where a Boston PD officer literally looks the other way as the gang of thieves make their escape. That little wordless moment says everything you need to know about the complicated relationship between the cops and the inhabitants of the Town (the colloquial name for the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown).
As clever and loaded as that moment is, the one that really sticks with you takes place just before that car chase. As the thieves are approaching the armored car they’re about to rob, they don nun’s habits (complete with garish, fright mask faces) and shoulder their assault rifles. On the street, a boy of about nine or ten watches, mouth agape, as a van-load of machine gun-toting nuns with nightmarish faces drives past. Affleck slows down the moment, letting it play on screen for ten or fifteen seconds as Doug makes eye contact with the kid. It’s not hard to imagine that Doug, growing up the son of a bank robber, would’ve had one or more similar moments. And it’s likewise not hard to imagine that kid, hearing about and seeing this sort of thing on the streets of his neighborhood on a somewhat regular basis (the film repeatedly makes the point that Charlestown in the bank robbery capitol of the world), could end up a lot like Doug.
That moment says more about the life these guys are living and the effect it has on the people around them than any speech Affleck and his co-writers could have written; and it’s more honest besides. Doug and his crew aren’t the sort to sit around and discuss their feelings with each other. But it’s not hard to believe that this small moment has something do with Doug’s later desire to get out of Charlestown once and for all. The environment is toxic. And he’s part of the problem. There’s nothing he can do to change the environment around him, so the only option is for him to get the hell out.
Where Affleck really excels as a director is in creating a sense of place and pulling great performances out of his actors. The latter is, of course, helped by the fact that he also writes really great scenes for almost all of them. Unfortunately, as a visual stylist, he’s still a little lacking. His style in The Town hasn’t progressed much from where it was in Gone Baby Gone. There’s nothing really wrong with it; it’s just not all that interesting. Almost every scene is separated from the next one by an aerial shot of the city (usually featuring the Bunker Hill Memorial) to show that time is passing. Most scenes start with a close-up of some detail from the scene (an oyster, for instance, at the start of a restaurant scene or a rose being clipped at the start of a scene with Pete Postlethwaite’s florist) before moving into handheld over the shoulder shots of the actors in the scene. It’s all very workmanlike. It does the job and that’s about it.
But, really, I can’t complain too much about Affleck’s lack of visual flair when he gets so much else right. The Town is a precisely, carefully constructed movie and the visuals mostly just get out of the story’s way. And when the story’s this sturdy and the acting’s this solid, I’d have to be a real asshole to complain that the visuals lacked poetry.
Make no mistake, though, as much as a certain kind of audience will enjoy it, The Town is a very easy movie to hate. The character Affleck chose to play, for instance, is such an all around great guy that it’s a little difficult not to think his ego might’ve had something to do with that decision. And the plot itself, while meticulously assembled, is also very familiar. I mean, how many times have we seen the One Last Job heist movie where nothing goes according to plan (hell, there are three in theaters right now (Takers, Inception and The American)? Or the loose cannon best friend who puts everyone in danger with his recklessness? (Jeremy Renner plays the hell out of that role here but it’s still one we’ve seen a thousand times.) So if the little moments and the great performances aren’t enough to satisfy you, the other more derivative elements of The Town are easy to ridicule. For me, though, there’s no shame in aiming a little lower when you hit the target this accurately.
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