Ben Affleck directs and stars in The Town, a 2010 crime thriller about a Boston bank robber who falls for a woman his crew once held hostage. The film runs 125 minutes. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 8, 2010, and Warner Bros. released it in the United States on September 17, 2010.
Trailer, via Warner On Demand.
Doug MacRay and the crew from Charlestown
The setup is clean. Four lifelong friends — Doug MacRay (Affleck), Jem Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), Albert “Gloansy” Magloan (Slaine) and Desmond “Dez” Elden — rob a bank in latex skeleton masks. Jem takes manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage against Doug’s wishes, then releases her unharmed. When the crew learns Claire lives in their neighborhood, Doug follows her to find out what she told the FBI.
That decision drives everything. Doug meets Claire at a laundromat and introduces himself. She does not recognize his voice. He tells her about a mother who probably lives in Tangerine, Florida, and about being drafted as a professional ice hockey player. She tells him about the Fighting Irish leprechaun tattoo she saw on one robber’s neck — Jem’s tattoo. Doug knows Jem will kill her if she reports it, so he talks her out of telling the FBI.
Renner is the reason to watch. Jem is volatile, loyal and ready to kill Claire at any point, and Renner plays him without a single soft note. The Academy, Golden Globe and SAG voters noticed, nominating him for Best Supporting Actor. Pete Postlethwaite earned a posthumous BAFTA nomination for playing Fergus “Fergie” Colm.
A florist, an armored car and a wiretap
Jon Hamm plays FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley, who suspects the crew has ties to Irish mobster Fergie Colm, a man who fronts as a florist. Chris Cooper appears briefly as Doug’s father, Stephen, serving five consecutive life sentences.
The armored car job in the North End is where The Town stops being a character study. The crew wears latex nun masks. A guard is shot. Machine gun fire and a police chase follow. It is the loudest stretch of the film and the least interesting — a standard action beat dropped into a story that had been running on tension instead.
“Welcome to the bank robbery capital of America.”
Frawley interrogates Doug and his associates the next day, then has to release them for lack of evidence and failure to extract a confession. He wiretaps Claire’s phone after Doug asks her to go to Florida with him. She quits her job without knowing. Frawley shows Claire Doug’s criminal file and threatens to prosecute her as an accomplice.
What the four leads are actually playing
| Character | Actor | Function in the story |
|---|---|---|
| Doug MacRay | Ben Affleck | Bank robber who hides his identity from Claire |
| Jem Coughlin | Jeremy Renner | Volatile crew member who wants Claire dead |
| Claire Keesey | Rebecca Hall | Bank manager, hostage, then Doug’s partner |
| Adam Frawley | Jon Hamm | FBI agent who wiretaps Claire and threatens charges |
The table is the film’s real structure. Every scene pairs one of these four against another, and the movie is best when it lets Doug and Claire share a frame without saying much.
The final score at Fenway Park
The crew’s last job is Fenway Park. The film builds to it, and the robbery itself is staged with real care — the empty ballpark, the vault, the escape. It is a better ending than the movie has earned, because the Claire problem never gets solved. She is a character who exists to be lied to, and Hall does more with that than the script gives her.
Blake Lively plays Krista Coughlin, Jem’s sister and Doug’s ex, in a role that is mostly a warning about where Doug came from. Titus Welliver plays Det. Dino Ciampa. Dennis McLaughlin plays Rusty. The supporting cast is deep and almost entirely wasted.
The Town was adapted from Chuck Hogan’s 2004 novel Prince of Thieves, and Affleck co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Stockard and Peter Craig. It grossed $154 million worldwide and received the National Board of Review Award for Best Cast. The National Board of Review also named it one of the top ten films of 2010.
What holds up and what does not
The adaptation is tight. At 125 minutes, the editing keeps the heist sequences legible. The film received positive reviews from critics for its direction, screenplay, editing and the performances of the cast, particularly Renner.
The problem is that the film wants Claire to be more than a plot device and cannot get there. Doug lies to her for most of the runtime, and the movie treats that as romance rather than as the thing that will eventually destroy both of them. When Frawley shows her the file, the film finally admits what it has been doing, but by then it is too late to make her a full person.
Renner’s performance is the part worth remembering. He is the only member of the crew who seems genuinely dangerous, and the film is honest enough to know it.
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