The Town **** (4 stars)
Director – Ben Affleck (Screenwriter)
Starring – Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, and Chris Cooper
MPAA - Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and drug use.
Actor/Director/Screenwriter Ben Affleck rises to Scorsese level brilliance in the crime drama “The Town.” This is a brutal, profane, movie that delivers thrills better than “Heat.” Affleck has made a film here that will be difficult to ignore at the Academy Awards.
The Town is Charleston Massachusetts, the capital of bank and armored car robberies, and slum suburb of Boston. Amidst prostitution, drug and alcohol addiction, and a daily threat of violent death, lives Ben Affleck’s character Doug MacRay. His life is run by the local boss “The Flouriest” and he plans and runs bank heists with his buddies. While trying to dig himself out of the pile of refuse his life has become MacRay falls in love with a hostage from one of his bank robberies, Claire (Rebecca Hall – Frost/Nixon). Their lives become an entangled web as MacRay and his friends are the prime suspects in an FBI investigation.
Co-Starring as MacRay’s closest friend is Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) who plays a vicious murder parolee whose life is lived under the shadow of death at each step. Affleck and Renner make a dynamic criminal duo reminiscent of Affleck and Damon in Good Will Hunting. The characters all are living tragic lives, but there may be hope for redemption.
I might say this film is like Good Will Hunting meets Heat and The Departed. Take the twisted plots and high caliber acting, meld them together and you get The Town. This is not a film for the faint of hear. While the violence is not over the top it is realistic and brutal, the dialogue has an F-word for every minute of playing time, but the overall film is gripping and tense.
This is the kind of drama I live to see in the theaters; a film with excellent character and plot development, good script, top notch acting, and intense action. This is a first class action/drama, one that is guaranteed to thrill.
Sex/Nudity – 8 out of 10 – In a very quick shat we see a stripper spin on a pole, and we see a glimpse of one breast and then we see the exposed buttocks of a stripper. A woman straddling a man from the waist up they moan and we assume they are having sex. We see a man with his shirt off laying on top of a woman, they moan, we assume they are having sex.
Violence – 8 out of 10 – There is a lot of machine gun fire against innocent bystanders, police officers, and security guards. Quite a few people are shot, there is some blood. One man is hit repeatedly in the head with the butt of a gun, we find out later he is in ICU but okay. One man crashes into a car and dies, we see his bloodied head and body.
Profanity – 150 or so F-words, multiple uses of other profanities and religious exclamations.
