Ben Affleck’s latest Boston-bound flick The Town prides itself on its Beantown roots. The characters sport jerseys of Bruins and Red Sox heroes and speak in a slurred concoction of accented ‘A’s and “townie” speak that makes one wonder if the film should be classified as foreign. In one interrogation scene, a ticked-off FBI agent cracks “You and yah bawys didn’t just roll over a Stah Mahket ovah in Mawlden for a bahg a’ quartahs.”
To the outsider, it all seems authentic. After all, there are enough ubiquitous shots of the Boston skyline, of the Bunker Hill Memorial and Zakim Bridge. The Town lives in the same dark alleyways The Departed and Mystic River strolled down. But upon closer look, it’s not Boston. It’s movie-Boston, a grimy, shady perversion that wallows in New York City’s seedy footsteps as criminal capital of the world (a fact the title card makes explicitly clear). It’s a place where DiCaprios and Scorceses flash “Federal Mahshal” badges and shoot up the underbellies of Southie to a Rolling Stones soundrack. It’s the city of an imaginative 13-year-old, where sloping, winding streets of the North End are perfect for a car chase and where the pillars of Fenway Park are excellent cover for a climactic firefight between “cahps” and “rahbbahs.”
The story follows a band of those robbers, a surly bunch of Charlestown boys led by a gruff prince of thieves, Dougie MacRay, played by director and actor Ben Affleck. After a successful bank robbery, the group of Boston bruisers plan their next heist. But when Dougie falls for the attractive and wicked-ahsome sole witness from the last job, the gang finds the FBI is hot on their trail.
Dougie’s dilemma drives the plot of the film, but like most action flicks, the characters are nothing to rave about. Only Affleck’s Dougie and his partner in crime Jim Coughlin give the film some pop (soda, to you Bostonians). Affleck brings the prerequisite toughened grizzle to his role of the tortured hometown boy seeking redemption and escape from his violent life. And just in case you ever forget how tough and grizzled he is, a healthy heaping of close-up shots of his five o’clock shadow will key you back in. But he’s a likeable protagonist, who all too clearly wants out of the gang life. The rough and tumble Jim Coughlin is his polar opposite. Where Dougie applies mercy, Coughlin sees only brutality. Jeremy Renner, fresh off an Oscar nod for his starring role in last year’s The Hurt Locker, gives the character a much needed edge, Dare I say Renner’s version of a vicious townie here is even better than his much-lauded and much-overrated portrayal of that loose-cannon bomb diffuser. He calmly shoots into kneecaps with an icy glare and a bullet, then cracks a smile during the lulls in the action. Yet even then his eyes bore holes through the others on screen; the crooked grin is a veneer just like the masks the robbers wear, hiding a dark man who fears no retribution.
But enough about acting and story. Who needs it? Give me guns! Explosions! Blood and shattered glass! The Town serves up these staples of the action movie palate with aplomb. Though the movie never bothers to explain it, surely Charlestown hosts a secret academy for aspiring criminals. How else could our movie’s heroes learn such deadly squad combat, impeccable accuracy, and assault rifle training? There’s no shortage of screeching cars, blazing guns and a surprising selection of inventive disguises that would make the Garment District blush.
It all devolves into typical action movie fun, despite an opening that hints at something more subtle. The opening robbery happens with kinetic grace as the thieves leap over counters like Olympian hurdlers. For brief second, the camera darts away to silent CCTV security footage, and in those moments, the pain of the voiceless violence becomes pseudo-reality, like clips from a nightly news broadcast. But by the end of the film we’ve crossed back into the sterile safety of over-the-top action movie ridiculousness, including a climactic scene that is almost laughable in its sheer badassery. It’s all fun and games when somebody gets hurt, especially when that townie had it coming.
Still, Ben Affleck deserves his dues. His directorial debut Gone Baby Gone showed a similar Boston, but followed up with a punch of emotional heft. He’s clearly capable of charging his films with more than just explosions, but in The Town, Affleck only wants to joke around, to make familiar locales his hostile playgrounds. It’s a fun-house view of a place Bostonians call home, where sacred sites like Fenway Park can be riddled with bullet holes for the sake of some smiles.
Not that this would ever happen in reality. If anyone dared to sneeze on that cathedral of a stadium, they’d be found floating face down in the Charles before you could say “Dunkin Donuts.” And Ben would probably approve. Go Sox.
The Town is a Duck Tour gone horribly wrong, a touristy treat with guns and f-bombs attached: B
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