Steve Reviews The Town

The Town is one of those films that could have gone either way. How many times has there been a bank robbery movie where the unlikely hero ends up stopping the bad guy all by themselves at the very end, roll credits, everyone feels good? Too many.

Then there’s the other scenario where there are so many twists and turns that you never really know WHO the bad guy is, and the audience is so confused by the end that they dislike it, regardless of how good it is.

This film is different. It’s still a classic tale of bank robbery, but they make you like both the “bad guys” and the “good guys,” and you don’t care what happens.

The town in question is a suburb of Boston, Mass, that supposedly has the highest per capita of bank robberies in all of the United States. The folks in Boston are very loyal to the things they love. They love Tom Brady, Irish whisky, the Red Sox, and Ben Affleck. There are many people in the world who generally dislike Affleck, myself included. But being a Boston guy, Affleck does Boston like no other. The Town was written and directed by Affleck, and it is arguably his best film to date.

One of the things that impressed me the most was the use of Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. There is a pretty elaborate series of events that takes place there, and although some of it was probably shot on a sound stage somewhere, a lot of it was actually filmed at the ballpark. The MLB is usually pretty stingy when it comes to their intellectual property, but this film may have the greatest ballpark shootout of all time.

-Steve
10.8.2010