The Town

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:59:35 +0100

A solid, but flawed heist movie.

I am not a big fan of Ben Affleck, to tell you the truth.I haven't seen a lot of the movies he starred in or any of the movie's, besides this, that he's directed.A lot of people claim that "Gone Baby Gone" was a milestone in his career, so I'll check it out whenever I get the chance."The Town" is a good overall movie, a solid take on the heist genre, and a hollow romance story.Don't expect anything great from "The Town".To be honest, I think the movie is a little over-rated.How could Richard Roeper, a film critic for the Chicago Sun Times, give this movie an "A+" and say it's one of the best movies of 2010? It's even crazier how he put this movie at #5 on his top 10 list and put "Toy Story 3" at #6.How in God's name is "The Town", a watchable movie, better than "Toy Story 3", a perfect example of one of the best animated films of our time? Your a good critic Mr. Roeper, but I wonder if you don't know what your talking about sometimes.Getting back to the movie, there's some good things to be said about it.The action/heist sequences are well-made and make the movie good enough to be considered a solid robbers movie.Even if it's not great, it's definetly a hell of a lot better than "Takers".The story is also good.What makes the movie fall flat at parts is the romance between Ben Affleck and Rebecca Hall.I didn't feel any chemistry between the 2 characters, making the relationship hard to believe in and difficult to care for.As for the performances, they're only decent.I didn't like Rebecca Hall that much and Ben Affleck really didn't show enough emotion or energy in his performance to allow me to get into his character.The performances are forgiveable, but the shallow romance did not help carry the movie forward in any way.

To make it even worse, Affleck released an extended cut of the movie only on Blu-ray, featuring 25 minutes of footage never seen in theaters.It's sad to say that some movies actually deserved to be extended, such as "Wachmen", and some don't, such as "The Town".It's frustrating to see, as I said before, an uninteresting relationship being extended by God knows how many minutes.Take my advice, if you liked the movie enough to buy, just buy the theatrical version instead.The extended cut isn't really worth 2 1/2 hours of your time.

R-rated version: B
Extended cut: B-

the-town

The Town