I've got to be honest I like Ben Affleck as a director and am looking forward to the next movie he's directing, whatever and whenever that may be. I've now seen all three of the movies he's directed and I can honestly say I'm a fan. I waited a long time before I saw The Town. The main reason is because I thought from the trailer I saw it was going to be a typical movie freely flowing with Hollywood cliches - I'm man enough to admit I was completely wrong. This is the middle movie of Affleck's director's career right smack in between Gone, Baby Gone and Argo (personally I think it is better than Argo). This movie is two and half hours long but the pacing and characters helped the time to not feel as long and in fact the movie felt shorter than it was and I saw the director's cut so I don't know what was added and don't really care.
The characters and the actors playing the characters are what really helped this movie to be as good as it turned out. I got engaged with the characters, their lives, their struggles, their decisions I felt I understood them in ways that felt intimate. It also helped that Affleck cast some really good actors to help flesh out these characters and make them breathe. I liked how this movie is sympathetic to the essentially the bad guy, played by Ben Affleck, but never once makes the FBI agent chasing him a dick. In a lot movies they seem to make the bad guy the hero and the cop chasing them the villain. I liked the FBI agent John Hamm played and Hamm gave him enough personality that his character never seemed cliche but had real sense of who he was without giving into the standard Hollywood formula and Hamm didn't have a huge part but he more than made up for it. It was a good script that dived into the history of the characters in a way that didn't feel forced as the movie explored their pasts subtly with an assurance and confidence lacking in many movies. The characters also responded to the situations and each other with a sense of reality versus the artificial fantasy of Hollywood characters, where I find myself throwing up my hands in disbelief at the utter lack intelligence versus the stupid on display. I didn't find that here and that was wholeheartedly enjoyed.
If I had to break this movie down I would say this is the Boston version of Michael Mann's Heat, which was set in LA. And I think this more than lives up to that statement as Affleck's character is even seen watching that movie in one scene. The movies are similar in a lot of way as they both explore the cops and criminal and the heists the criminals plan and execute. Only The Town doesn't go as far into the cop's life as Heat did, but Affleck's character is very similar to De Niro's character in Heat. If you're going to steal, steal from the best.
One of the things I've noticed over the years with directors is that there seems to be only be a handful of directors that can direct actions scenes and fully communicate to the audience what is going on without them being in confusion as to what is happening. Paul Greengrass springs to mind as a someone who seems OK with the audience being in confusion as to what is happening with the action scenes. Affleck hit it out of the part with the action scenes in this movies as I never once felt confused as to what was going on but always felt he was assure of himself and the action that was happening in all the scenes. His communication skill with the action scene was full of maturity, this from a guy who had only previously directed one movie and that movie not full of any sort of the action found in this movie. He really brought the city of Boston to life this movie as it felt like another character altogether as it not only played key roles in the characters of the movie but also served as key in the story. This is something that was also felt in Mann's Heat, as the city of LA was a prominent character throughout that movie - just another Heat reference for this movie - one that I don't think Affleck would mind.
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