Short review: Take equal parts Good Will Hunting and The Departed. Filter out Matt Damon and replace with Ben Affleck. Blend into mush. Serve The Town.
Long review: This is a surprisingly well-reviewed film with 94% of critics giving it a fresh rating. The movie was so well reviewed that I felt compelled to re-watch shortly after my first viewing. What had I missed? (spoilers below)
In the town Ben Affleck is a guy from a neighborhood in Boston that produces bank robbers. He is a prodigious robber whose father is in prison for murder and robbery and whose mother was a junkie who killed herself when he was young. He no longer drinks or does drugs.
In the opening scenes of the movie, Affleck and his crew rob a bank. When things don’t go as planned, they take the attractive female manager hostage. They soon release her and also find out that she also lives in their neighborhood. Affleck is tasked with finding out if she can identify them. He intentionally crosses path with her. They hit it off and hilarity ensues and then things get hard to believe. She is a yuppy who falls madly in love with Affleck’s character who, as far as she knows, simply works at a rock quarry. Presumably she falls for him because she just loves slumming it, or because as Ben Affleck wants you to know, Ben Affleck is awesome (Affleck, the co-writer and director of the movie tries his hardest to prove that he’s good in bed and looks good shirtless).
Affleck and his crew pull off another robbery. The FBI is closing in. Affleck, now that he’s found true love, decides he wants out. However he is conflicted. He crew doesn’t want him to go (one of them went to prison for killing someone who was going to kill Affleck). Also, the local crime boss has decided that Affleck must lead his team in a robbery of Fenway Park, a three million dollar heist, else Affleck’s new girlfriend will be killed. Affleck goes through with the heist which ends in a terrific gun battle. Most of the team members are killed. Affleck escapes and hopes that his love — she now knows that he’s the robber who held up her bank — will find him in Florida. Finish movie.
To be fair, during my first viewing, I was a bit distracted because I was also working on some PHP code. That would be problematic because much of the movie’s somewhat-hard-to-believe plot relied on elements that were underdeveloped. The elements were thinly set up in the dialogue, which I missed the first time. Beside that, here are the main problems I had with the movie.
As mentioned, the romance between Affleck and bank manager is more than improbable. How often do college-educated, successful women fall for 30 year-old guys who never went to college and who only works by performing manual labor? That’s hard enough to believe, but in the end, she’s still clearly looking out for him. She still cares deeply for him (still no idea why) even after she learns that he’s the master criminal who took her hostage. I hope I’m not the only one who is bothered by movies that rely on strong female characters who turn into total idiots whenever they meet a guy.
The local crime boss, called The Florist, runs a flower shop for cover. He’s also a bookie and drug dealer who seems to have held his high post for decades. He’s like the Jack Nicholson character in The Departed. Unlike the Nicholson character, The Florist shows no signs of wealth; rather he still works in the shop stripping thorns off roses. Good for cover? Sure. But why lead a little crime empire for decades if you don’t seem to reap any rewards from the enterprise?
Along similar lines, Affleck and his crew and pulling in serious money. It’s said to be $90k per person from their first robbery. What are they doing with it? Gambling, strippers and drugs are part of it. But their should be some leftover. Yet none of them seem to have any plans for moving on to bigger and better things. They seem to rob just for the fun of doing it.
Then there’s the Fenway Park robbery. I don’t understand why guys from Boston would want to rob Fenway Park. Banks? Ok, I know people have problems with banks. They can use that as rationalization for stealing from them. Aside from the money, why Fenway Park. Moreover, at this point in the movie, the FBI has a pretty good idea what is going on. Everyone in the neighborhood knows the FBI knows what is going on. The Florist is the one who demanded this robbery take place and that Affleck’s team do the dirty work. But why do that when you know the FBI should be watching that team’s every move (I must have missed the one line explanation for why the FBI wasn’t watching their every single move).
Lastly, Affleck’s character is somewhat like Matt Damon’s character from Good Will Hunting. He’s the extremely talented guy from a bad neighborhood in Boston. In Good Will Hunting this approach works. Will is not a saint (after all he’s been in numerous fights), but he has faced the justice system and he can plausibly be redeemed. Affleck’s character, by comparison, leads armed heists of banks and armored cars (and then Fenway Park) and is on the run from the law. The crimes are orders of magnitude worse and the punishment he has faced is less. And I’m supposed to be rooting for this guy? I was hoping he’d get shot along with his co-conspirators.
I think I’ve wasted enough time with this. The critics really screwed up reviewing this one. Maybe Ben Affleck is right, everyone turns into a mindless idiot whenever Ben Affleck is present. The Town is a decent movie. But watch Good Will Hunting and or The Departed first if you have a choice.
