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The Town Movie Review

The Town is a 2010 heist crime thriller film directed by and starring Ben Affleck. It’s a messy, but solid effort coming from Affleck.

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“If we get jammed up,

we’re holding court on the street“

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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. I’ve seen this plot before multiple times, and in fact most of this movie is rather familiar in all of its plot points. But that’s not the biggest problem here. The largest issue stems from its lack of focus as the movie jumps from one subplot to another without ever fully developing any one of them.

However, all are undoubtedly solid. I did like the romance to a degree as the dialogue was pretty good and some scenes were charming. I also liked the thriller elements and the heist, though occupying less screen time, was very well executed. As most have already pinpointed, the shootout scenes are actually superb. The action overall is excellent and probably the film’s biggest selling point along with the imagery of the nun masks too of course.

I did not care for Affleck’s character here whatsoever. In fact, I found him to be incredibly unlikable and the actor here is very annoying. Jeremy Renner himself is pretty good and the scenes between the two are quite well done. Rebecca Hall is a cliched love interest of a character and others are all forgettable with the exception of Jon Hamm who’s reliably charismatic and cool in the role of an FBA agent.

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The Town is phenomenally executed in its action scenes. I had a lot of fun watching the shootout and even the car chase scenes, which are both usually not my cup of tea, but here their execution was so good that I really liked them. The romance and some of the dramatic scenes took way too much screen time, but that maybe stemmed from me watching the director’s cut of the movie, which was way too long clocking at two and a half hours. Overall, the movie is well shot and well made, but the direction and the script could have been better.