The Town (2010)

Jack and I thought this story of longtime friends who rob banks was good: well paced with character development and lots of property damage (Ben Affleck got a high budget for his sophomore directing gig, albeit one that was supposed to be led by Adrian Lyne). Based on Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves (now available as The Town) which is itself based on a Boston Globe story (he talks about it briefly here), the movie follows the friends, led by Affleck's character Doug MacRay, as they plan jobs and answer to the Florist, played by Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father (1993), The Usual Suspects (1995), more) who strikes fear into the hearts of his men. Doug's closest friend is Jem, played by Jeremy Renner (I wrote about him in The Hurt Locker, after which he was Oscar-nominated for that role), who, like Blake Lively as Jem's sister, is a Californian who studied and honed a Boston accent so well that Affleck approved. Yes, I have been writing about accents a lot lately. They contribute much to the feel of the piece. Rebecca Hall (see my post on Please Give) does well, too, not only with a Boston accent overcoming her natural British, but with the full range of emotions necessary for her part of Claire, the woman held hostage in a bank robbery and all that ensues. Affleck himself may have been born in California, but was raised in Cambridge, and I think everybody knows that he won his Oscar for co-writing the screenplay for Good Will Hunting (1997) with his friend from Little League and beyond, Matt Damon, about a brilliant janitor working at Harvard (a job held by Affleck's father). Since I started blogging Affleck's been in He's Just Not That Into You, Extract, and State of Play, playing very different roles each time, and he's proved both here and in Gone Baby Gone (2007) that he can direct as well. Jon Hamm (best known for the hit series Mad Men, he's also very funny as the handsome but dumb klutz Drew Baird on 30 Rock) gives his FBI agent Frawley the Don Draper intensity that makes us want to watch him. Two actors playing gang members who did not need to learn a new accent are Slaine (one name only), a Boston-born rapper who lives in New York and was also in Gone Baby Gone, and Owen Burke, who is originally from Charlestown, the district from where the characters hail.

We saw this a few weeks ago but then went out of town and I'm just now catching up. I think The Florist spoke with an Irish accent but I don't really remember anymore (I assumed Postlethwaite to be Irish because In the Name of the Father is about the IRA, but he's actually from west-central England). The score is composed by David Buckley and Harry Gregson-Williams, who collaborated on Gone Baby Gone, among many other credits (here's one track from their score, and the rest are on the right side of the page), and there are also five songs, described in detail here, and available for listening here. Most of it the movie was shot in the greater Boston area, including Fenway Park (and Major League baseball was apparently allowed a vote in certain aspects of those scenes--to tell you now would be a spoiler but it's on imdb, so check at your own risk) so that's an added draw for fans of that city. The action sequences are great. We recommend this movie.