Doug MacRay is from Charlestown, Boston… and he’s a bank robber. His team of robbers plan out their jobs in great detail and generally don’t have violence included or other things. When a job goes slightly wrong, one of his men takes a bank manager briefly hostage, getting her info and sending her blindly on her way. Not trusting the decision, MacRay ends up following the manager, Claire Keesey, and accidentally ends up comforting her through her traumatic ordeal. After a few ‘check-ins’ the pair end up becoming a couple, which ends up affecting MacRay’s ongoing string of jobs. Destined to get out and be with Keesey, and not get caught by the FBI who is hot on his tail, he does his best to get the (bleep) out of the game. Regretfully, his past and his team won’t let that happen so easily.
First the positives…
There is no denying how well written and well acted this film has been advertised to be. Affleck knack to bring ‘reality’ to the characters and pick the perfect people to compliment those characters is undeniably perfect. You love MacRay as the audience, but you simply see too many flaws in his character to smoothly get away. He wears his flaws on his face and you understand, just like MacRay, that he has some work to do to become a true ‘good guy’. Affleck plays that sad faced character perfectly and doesn’t let it get in the way of his rough/tough nature. If he doesn’t get nominated for an Academy Award it will be sad. Plus, if Affleck carried his Boston accent in real life we would probably all think he was this badass (sorry, that didn’t have anything to do with the review, but it’s true).
Each character is crafted this particular way and it works well. Jon Hamm’s FBI S.A. Adam Frawley is relentless in his search for the ‘crooks’. Rebecca Hall’s Claire Keesey plays a great rattled, innocent bank manager. Give some kudos to Jeremy Renner’s short-tempered James Coughlin, as well. He plays MacRay’s sidekick and mean streak. While the IMDB.com picture doesn’t do him justice, this guy looks like a badass and carries himself that way. He’s the only thing keeping our anti-hero on the robbing side of life and one of the more frighteningly unstable characters with a gun.
Finally, the story is put together particularly well. For a movie that clocks in over two hours you won’t really feel that very much. The story is even, unforgiving and the plot points are laid out really well well. What was particularly important about the story is finding a safe transition for Affleck’s character to fall in love with Hall’s. Affleck and his fellow writers did that beautifully, which kept the entire ‘robbery’ ball rolling and eventually set up for a great ending.
So what are my negatives on this film? While I do realize, because I’m not a complete idiot, that this movie is different in many details it just seemed a lot like Michael Mann’s cop and robbers drama (starring Hollywood) called Heat. Cops (Pacino) versus Robbers (De Niro) going after each other and human elements thrown in the way of the chase. I know it’s not simple as that statement, but it felt a lot similar when I was watching The Town. Does that make the movie bad? Not necessarily, but for me it just didn’t seem as ‘groundbreaking’ as people had made it. Is the movie good? God, yes. Is the movie good enough to win awards this year? Hell, yes. Is the movie completely original? Only partly for me.
With that said, you should see this brilliant piece of film from Affleck. He and his crew outdid themselves on this one and you’ll enjoy it.
As for the Blu-ray, the movie was shot in mostly drab, rainy situations, so you may not get the full benefit of 1080p until the end. There isn’t much grain in the scenes, but there isn’t a lot of beauty either. There are some great love scenes and moments (especially the ending) where you will be happy that you spent the extra dough to get the HD goods. I wish I could give you some examples, but I’m not going to ruin it.
Where this Blu-rya lights up the most in value is in the audio. The audio for The Town is freakin’ outstanding. It’s an action movie by nature, with some good drama involved, so you will enjoy the action scenes. Now, you will really smile (and probably worry your neighbors a bit) in the last heist in the movie. There’s so much audio goodness that you better keep the 7.1 speakers down or cops might be called — just kidding. You’ll benefit from the DTS-HD in this one.
Finishing up the Blu-ray, let’s talk features. Here’s what you’re looking at:
Blu-ray:
· Ben’s Boston – an inside look at the film and how it was made authentically in Boston
o The Cathedral of Boston
o Pulling off the perfect heist
o The Town
o The real people of The Town
o Nuns with Guns: Filming in the North End
o Ben Affleck: Director & Actor
· Director’s commentary: Theatrical Version
· Director’s commentary: Extended Cut
DVD:
· Ben’s Boston
o The real people of The Town
o Ben Affleck: Director & Actor
· Director’s commentary
You get some solid features on this Blu-ray, especially with both versions of the film at your fingertips. You also get some great commentary from das director, who provides some very solid insight about the film. You also get a great perspective on ‘the real people’ the film was based on, which is both frightening and sad (but nonetheless interesting). Instead of force feeding a ton of crap features, which studios sometimes do on big name films, these seem very well planned. They compliment the film really well and stick to the small world that has already been built for it.