Number 729 on the top 1000 films of all time is Ben Affleck's crime-drama 'The Town.'
As well as directing, Ben Affleck stars as Douglas "Doug" Macray, a bank-robber who is looking to go straight. After his latest heist goes wrong, where his crew Jeremy "Jem" Coughlin (Jeremy Renner,) Albert "Gloansy" Macgloan (Slaine) and Desmond "Dez" Elden (Owen Burke) take bank manager Clare Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage before releasing her later, Doug begins keeping track of her. The two eventually fall in love. But for Doug to escape the life completely, he has to do one last job as ordered by local crime boss Fergus "Fergie" Colm (Pete Poselthwaite.)
What followed was a largely generic and banal action-thriller spearheaded by a largely wooden performance by Ben Affleck. Since starting this list, I've seen him in a few films, like Argo, which he also directed. And I would argue he is better as a director than an actor. It doesn't matter whether the role is a rough-round-the-edges hero or a bad boy turning good, he isn't very expressive. He just always seems to have a permanent scowl on his face. And there isn't a whole lot of emotion there. There are plenty of emotional scenes, or scenes that should be emotional, but Affleck couldn't really carry them off. And since I wasn't invested in him as a character, I wasn't really invested in the storyline. Although he was nominated for Best Actor Bafta for his role in Argo, so what do I know?
Affleck's lack of chemistry with Rebecca Hall didn't do much to help things either. Also a brief note on Rebecca Hall's accent. What was up with that? She's English, but at times it sounded like she was switching back and forth between English and Bostonian.
Much more convincing was Jeremy Renner. He plays Doug's childhood best friend and fellow bank-robber Jem Coughlin. Unlike his friend, he has no desires of leaving the life behind which sets up some nice conflict between the two. Renner was far more charismatic to watch and his storyline was more compelling. And it's a shame Poselthwaite was so under-used. He's a great actor so he should have had a far greater screen-presence.
This wasn't a film I enjoyed very much if you didn't already guess. Sure it was watchable enough, but Affleck's wooden performance stopped it from achieving any true greatness in my eyes.
This was pretty run of the mill. As James said the character played by Jeremy Renner was much more interesting than Affleck's part. I noticed Pete Postlethwaite, who had a small part as a villain, looked very thin. The film was released in September 2010 and Pete died of cancer in January 2011, so most likely his last film. Presumably he was dying during the shooting of this movie. A tragic end to a great actor.
ReplyDelete