The Town (2010 film)

The Town
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ben Affleck
Produced by	Graham King Basil Iwanyk
Screenplay by	Ben Affleck Peter Craig Aaron Stockard
Based on	Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan
Narrated by	Ben Affleck
Starring	Ben Affleck Jon Hamm Rebecca Hall Blake Lively Jeremy Renner Pete Postlethwaite Chris Cooper
Music by	Harry Gregson-Williams David Buckley
Cinematography	Robert Elswit
Editing by	Dylan Tichenor
Studio	Legendary Pictures GK Films Thunder Road Film
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	September 17, 2010 (2010-09-17)
Running time	125 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$37 million
Box office	$154 million

The Town is a 2010 crime film starring, co-written, and directed by Ben Affleck adapted from Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves. The film opened in theaters in the United States on September 17, 2010, at number one with more than $23 million and positive reviews. Jeremy Renner was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as James "Jem" Coughlin.

The film is one of a number set in Boston, Massachusetts, over the past decade that have formed a "sub-genre" of crime films, including Affleck's own 2007 film Gone Baby Gone.

Plot

Four lifelong friends from the dangerous Boston neighborhood of Charlestown—Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), James "Jem" Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), Albert "Gloansy" Magloan (Slaine), and Desmond "Dez" Elden (Owen Burke)—rob a bank and take the manager, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall), hostage. After escaping, they release Claire, who has seen a distinctive tattoo on one of the robbers. Doug follows Claire to prevent Jem from eliminating her as a witness, but a romance grows between them, which he hides from the gang. As they grow closer, Doug tells Claire of his search for his long-lost mother, and how he blew his chance to be a professional hockey player for a life of crime. She tells him about seeing the tattoo, and Doug realizes she can identify Jem and send them all to jail, and that Jem will kill her if he realizes the truth. He persuades her that the authorities cannot protect her as a witness and she decides not to tell the police, but Doug is becoming disenchanted with his criminal lifestyle, and the lies he has to tell.

FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) surveils the gang and recognizes their ties to local crime lord Fergus "Fergie" Colm (Pete Postlethwaite), who has another robbery set up for the gang. During a visit to his father, Stephen (Chris Cooper), in prison, Doug reveals his plans to leave Charlestown and go to Florida. Stephen ends the visit by telling his son, "I'll see you again, this side or the other." The gang's next robbery in the North End of Boston goes awry, and the gang barely escapes. Frawley interrogates the gang, but fails to get any confessions and is forced to release them. Grasping at straws, Frawley wiretaps Claire's phone, and when he learns of her relationship with Doug, Frawley threatens to prosecute Claire as an accomplice unless she will help them catch Doug. Shocked to discover her lover was one of her assailants, she agrees.

Meanwhile Fergie and Jem are both pressuring Doug about the next job, but Doug is determined to get out despite the debt he owes Jem for killing a man that threatened to kill Doug long ago. Fergie finally threatens to kill Claire, and reveals to Doug how he controlled his father by making his mother an addict, which led to her suicide. Doug gives in, but swears he will kill Fergie if anything happens to Claire.

At Fenway Park, Doug and Jem enter disguised as Boston police officers, nab $3 million in cash, and prepare to escape in an ambulance disguised as paramedics. But Doug's ex-girlfriend, Krista (Blake Lively), threatened by Frawley, reveals enough for the FBI to surround Fenway before the gang gets out. Caught in a firefight with SWAT, Dez and Gloansy are killed, while Doug and Jem slip away in their police uniforms. Frawley figures out the ruse and spots Jem, who fires at Frawley, but Jem is wounded and determined not to go back to prison, so he rushes the police and is gunned down. Doug sees it all but knows he cannot save Jem and walks away.

Knowing he'll never escape as long as Fergie is alive, Doug kills Fergie and his bodyguard and calls Claire to ask her to come away with him to Florida. Watching from across the street, Doug sees the FBI is there as Claire tells him to come over, but eventually she gives him a coded message to warn him away. Doug flees, donning his uncle's old MBTA uniform and escapes from Boston by driving a bus. Later, Claire finds a bag buried by Doug in her community garden containing money, a tangerine and a note from him telling her she can make better use of the money than he can, ending with, "I'll see you again, this side or the other." Claire donates the money, in the name of Doug's mother, to refurbish the local ice-hockey arena that Doug once played in. Doug is seen looking out over the water, alone, from the deck of a small house, seemingly safe in Florida.

Cast

• Ben Affleck as Douglas "Doug" MacRay, a career criminal and professional bank robber.
• Jon Hamm as Special Agent Adam Frawley, an FBI agent pursuing the team of criminals.
• Rebecca Hall as Claire Keesey, a bank manager who falls in love with Doug.
• Jeremy Renner as James "Jem" Coughlin, Doug's best friend and a member of Doug's team.
• Blake Lively as Krista Coughlin, Jem's sister and Doug's ex-girlfriend who has a 19-month-old daughter, Shyne.
• Chris Cooper as Stephen MacRay, Doug's incarcerated father.
• Slaine as Albert "Gloansy" Magloan, a member of Doug's team.
• Titus Welliver as Special Agent Dino Ciampa, Adam Frawley's partner.
• Pete Postlethwaite as Fergus "Fergie" Colm, the owner of a flower shop and the local crime boss.
• Owen Burke as Desmond "Dez" Elden, a member of Doug's team, and a systems technician at a cable company called Vericom.

Production

The interior of a former MassBank branch in Melrose, Massachusetts, was used for the main robbery of the film.

The production began filming late August 2009 in Boston. The former MASSBank branch located in Melrose, Massachusetts, was used as the location for the first robbery of the film, taking on the name Cambridge Merchants Bank (the exterior shots, however, are of Cambridge Savings Bank in Harvard Square). Filming also took place at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut, for casino scenes, Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Cedar Junction in Walpole, Massachusetts, for use of their visiting room, and at Anderson Regional Transportation Center in Woburn, Massachusetts, for the ending Amtrak scenes.^{[citation needed]}

Release

The Town was shown at the Venice Film Festival and premiered at Boston's Fenway Park. The film was released in the United States on September 17, 2010.

Box office

The film took first place at the box office during its opening weekend, taking in $23.8 million. The Town grossed $92.1 million in the United States and Canada with an additional $61.8 million in other territories for a total of $154 million worldwide on a production budget of $37 million.

Home media

The film was released on Blu-ray disc and DVD on December 17, 2010 (2010-12-17). Both versions include special features and commentary including a look at Affleck as a director and actor. The extended/unrated version is a Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy bundle which includes 28 minutes of additional footage, taking the runtime to over 153 minutes.

Reception

Critical reviews

The Town has received critical acclaim. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of 208 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.7 out of 10. The site describes the film as "tense, smartly written, and wonderfully cast". Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 74 based on 42 reviews.

Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, praising Jeremy Renner's performance and Affleck's direction. Several reviewers praised the film's action sequences. In his review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott commented on the opening heist, "That sequence, like most of the other action set pieces in the film, is lean, brutal and efficient, and evidence of Mr. Affleck’s skill and self-confidence as a director." Brooks, in The Guardian, wrote that the action sequences were "sharply orchestrated" but added "it's a bogus, bull-headed enterprise all the same; a film that leaves no cliche untrampled." Justin Chang wrote in Variety that the action scenes strike "an ideal balance between kineticism and clarity" aided by cinematographer Robert Elswit and film editor Dylan Tichenor. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film an A+, noting that he found the film incredibly similar to Michael Mann's Heat, which he described as "one of [his] favorite movies of all time." The reviewers at Spill.com also praised one of the shootout scenes, saying "It is surely the best shootout scene we have seen in decades." Writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Laremy Lengel titled his review "The Town Works Best if You Avoid the Heat," also referencing Mann's film.

As a Boston-based crime drama, the film forms part of a "crime-movie subgenre" typically marked by "flavorsome accents, pungent atmosphere and fatalistic undertow," according to Chang. Within that subgenre, which includes The Boondock Saints, The Departed, Mystic River and Affleck's Gone Baby Gone, The Town is more of a straightforward crime-procedural and has a more optimistic outlook.

Awards and nominations

Jon Hamm and Ben Affleck chat on the set in Cambridge, Massachusetts

The cast was nominated for several awards from the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast and the National Board of Review.

Also, Jeremy Renner received nominations for Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Pete Postlethwaite was posthumously been nominated for a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. The film also received several Satellite Award nominations for Renner, Affleck as director, film editing, adapted screenplay, and best motion picture drama. Carolyn Pickman (Location Casting Director) and Lora Kennedy (Casting Director) received a nomination from the Casting Society of America for Outstanding Achievement in Casting - Big Budget Feature - Drama.

Charlestown, bank robbery and crime

A voice in the trailer of the film says: "There are over 300 bank robberies in Boston every year. Most of these professionals live in a 1-square-mile neighborhood called Charlestown." In fact, there were 23 reported bank robberies in the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the first quarter of 2010, compared with 49 in Illinois and 136 in California, according to the FBI.

The film itself, however, only states that "One blue-collar Boston neighborhood has produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere in the world." It then quotes an unnamed Boston Robbery Task Force Federal Agent as saying, "Bank robbery became like a trade in Charlestown, passed down from father to son." During the film, Agent Frawley says something very similar along the lines of this quote while conversing with Claire, and also mentions that the traditional procedure of the BPD whenever a call about an armored car robbery comes in is to close the Charlestown Bridge.

The film also ends with a written disclaimer: "Charlestown's reputation as a breeding ground for armed robbers is authentic. However, this film all but ignores the great majority of the residents of Charlestown, past and present, who are the same good and true people found most anywhere."

According to a September 2010 article in The Boston Globe, Charlestown was once known as an area where bank robbers were concentrated, but has not been since the mid-1990s, and the subject has been a sore point for "Townies". Now much of the neighborhood has been gentrified. There is some sense of rivalry between Townies, people who lived in the historically Irish-Catholic neighborhood for decades, and "Tunies", largely white-collar workers who arrived with gentrification, but most of that has died down, the newspaper reports. [2] The film makes reference to the definition of "Tunies" during one of Doug and Claire's dates.

In the early 1990s, an increase in the number of bank and armored car robberies by Townies focused attention on Charlestown. In one heist in Hudson, New Hampshire, two guards were killed, and is alluded to in the film - during a scene where Agent Frawley is briefing his task force, he mentions that Doug's father is serving life for a notorious robbery in Nashua. According to Frawley, the elder Macray hijacked a "bread truck" (armored car) up to New Hampshire, and when one of the guards saw his face, he executed both of them with their own weapons. Frawley notes that this incident led to the passing of regulations prohibiting the driver from leaving the cab even if their partner was being held at gunpoint. Charles Hogan got the idea for his novel, on which the film is based, in 1995. "It was just so remarkable that this one very small community was the focus for bank robbers," he said, but he was very aware that crime was only one part of the community, and he did not want to make all residents of the neighborhood look like criminals. At the film's premiere, Affleck made a similar statement: "Charlestown isn’t full of bank robbers and Dorchester isn’t full of bad guys and Southie isn’t full of math geniuses or bad people."

Jack O'Callahan, a Charlestown native born in 1957, said there was an element of crime in Charlestown when he grew up there, "But it didn't bleed into the neighborhood. And those guys were pretty good parents who went to church on Sundays. They were gangsters, but they were good neighbors."

External links

• Official website
• The Town at the Internet Movie Database
• The Town at AllRovi
• The Town at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Town at Metacritic
• The Town at Box Office Mojo