The Town

Directed by: Ben Affleck

Written by: Peter Craig, Ben Affleck, Aaron Stockard (screenplay); Chuck Hogan (novel: "The Prince of Thieves")

This film came with a lot of word-of-mouth acclaim, but I ultimately found it mostly disappointing.

The plot itself is so thin that it's hard to summarize meaningfully. Suffice to say that, in the midst of a bank robbery, Affleck falls in love with a hostage (Hall), which upsets Renner because it puts their entire robbery gang at risk. Affleck, influenced by Hall, decides to quit the robbery game for good, agrees to one super-dangerous last job breaking into Fenway Park's vaults.

This film just felt helpless, like a fish flopping on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The normally charismatic (or, at least charming in most cases) Affleck falls totally flat in his attempt to pull double directing-acting duties. Both Renner and Hamm are excellent actors, but their roles are so limited and static that neither one has the opportunity to shine. Frankly, Hall's character existed merely as a plot device, and I don't even remember Lively even being in the film.

In the interest of honesty, I spent most of this moving wishing I were re-watching "The Departed" instead. This movie's settings and themes really set it up for comparisons to "The Departed." Unfortunately for Affleck, Scorsese' s film is actually really good, while "The Town" turned out more like an ugly cousin. (Does that make sense? Probably not. Oh well - no turning back now. I'm not going to waste valuable brain cells revising a review for a movie as poorly made as this one.)

To give Affleck credit, there are some amazing parts to this movie: namely, the action sequences. Each and every one of the heist scenes was well designed and shot. (The Fenway Park scene didn't need to be set in Fenway for any other reason than to emphasize "Hey, we're in Boston!" But I digress.) This movie would have benefited significantly from a couple more good hold-up scenes and a lot less "Ben Affleck-looking-tortured-and-brooding" scenes. They were the highlight, and the only redeemable reason to watch this movie.

I'll tell you now, don't waste your time with this movie. Go watch "The Departed" instead, regardless of how many times you have already seen it.