THEE ONE AND ONLY...TOWN

****SPOILERS****


by Idaho Chubbs in collaboration with Samuel Burbury


Holy fuck Ben Affleck is an auteur now? Well he does like Boston that's for sure. I haven't see "Gone Baby Gone" but I have viewed his latest work opening weekend with a sold out crowd, who applauded when the movie ended with Affleck's character (Douggy Mackray) all bearded in the Bayou working as a shrimper possibly(?) with Chris Cooper's father figure character from Cuaron's adaptation of Dicken's "Great Expectations", not his character's actual father Chris Cooper, who was stuck in Walpole for 5 lifetimes. What was also hilarious was the Ken Burns Civil war music that serenaded our thoughtful thieving hero's "poetic" musings/regrets to the love of his life that he went out with for probably two weeks, but she was from the uppety North Shore which represented higher class, so investing your whole life and hard earned freshly robbed Fenway cash in this vaguely attractive do-gooder bank manager was totally logical. 

I haven't seen a ton of movies this year, and usually the better ones start showing up starting now. The Town is not one of them. The hype and critical acclaim for this film is mind-boggling. Like most people the trailer excited me; you're thinking HEAT, gun-fights, Jeremy Renner is the shit, but in Boston, awesome, especially because I live right outside and I know Charlestown fairly well. But the more times I saw the trailer, the more I started laughing, mainly because of Lively's cleavage's Boston/drug-induced accent. Thankfully she was barely in the movie, but surprisingly she wasn't that bad unlike say Julia Roberts who's "Irish" accent single handedly took down a star studded "Michael Collins". I simply could not take anything in that movie seriously because of her. Fortunately I was able to take The Town seriously or at least tried really hard to. One of the main problems with this story is that it built itself around this construct that focusses on a small Boston town that grows bank-robbers like rural Pennsylvania used to grow Hall of Fame 1980's quarterbacks. Random right? (My intimacy with THE TOWN includes $35 gourmet pizzas from FIGS, cobble stoned creamery treats, walks around the monument, and admiring architectured condos (I might ponder about owning in another lifetime where I am a day trader or hedge-fund schemer), I'm intrigued, let's really explore that facet, or let's explore a non-believable love story about a "princely" thief who enjoys the show BONES, has a great collection of retro Boston sports team jackets, really misses his mother, and has a thing for dating hostages. I understand this is adapted from a book and the more I watch film adaptations, the more I realize how hard they are to do successfully. I know they are not supposed to be the book, more like a companion, but I just want them to be a good movie period. Having not read it I cannot compare; I can only comment on the film; and what I've deduced is that the love story was pushed to the forefront to sell it to a general audience, which does make sense, but if you're going to do that, write better or get some actors who pop or at least have chemistry and don't campaign so hard with a tagline ("Welcome to the bank robbery capital of America.") that would have you believe this is about Charlestown and bank-robbing. Because it truly isn't, it's just fringe stuff. Yes, we meet Doug's father and Pistol Pete Posthewaite's ganster florist who screwed Mackray senior over by hooking his wife on drugs, and yes we have a scene where The Former "Man In Black" (playing a local police detective) refers to the suspects and their connections as something resembling a "venn diagram", almost consciously reminding us that they are living up to the tagline content-wise. But it seems forced. You never get the sense that there are any other bank robbers in this town besides Douggy, Jem, and the other two dudes. Yet this is the world's capital of bank robbing.

From beginning to end, this movie moves too fast. We get short glimpses of who and what the characters are but it never seems satisfying. Recently a colleague of mine got into a friendly conversation with me about narrative complexity verses simple. He compared THE TOWN to later works by Clint Eastwood (I assume he was thinking "Million Dollar Baby" and maybe "Mystic River" --which was a great movie until it's preposterous conclusion that made no sense whatsoever, but I won't go into that). The problem right away in that comparison, and I'm singling out "Million Dollar Baby", is that Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood can carry an entire movie on their shoulders. Their performances ripped into our psyche and held our emotions hostage and then let them spill out in a sweet freedom of pulverizing sadness and confusion as to why life can be so terribly cruel. Ben Affleck and Rebecca Hall, cannot do this, at least not yet. Their performances were not bad but I got nothing from their characters either. Granted the script was way better for Eastwood's movie, way more polished, intimate and believable. This script gives no room for characters to be fleshed out, no time to believe that Affleck's Mackray could fall so head over heels with this, let's face it, bland bank manager ("but that's real and honest..please) in such a short amount of time. There is complexity through simplicity and vice versa. There is simple and honest and there is I've seen this story a million times and it was not believable to me. Obviously Hall's character represents a higher form of life that Doug yearns to attain, but has he not met an attractive yuppified young woman that he'll leave his whole life for in all his time in Charlestown yet? His lanterned-cleft chin and capacity for Rocky IV pull-ups has never turned any heads? The problem is not that this movie doesn't balance itself well with the topics and subplots involved, it's that none of them are given enough time to excite, fascinate, or make me care about anyone in this story to a level where I can walk out of the theater blown away. Right when the love story's taking off--bank robbing arc. Right when this whole local bank robbing trade is examined by the FBI or the script--torn back to the love story or back to another millionth sky-lined shot of Boston that peppered the entire movie literally, between each and every scene. Also, what about Hamm's character?--whose name I can't even recall, had no substance behind him. I mean who is this guy who wants to not, or wait, does want to "fuck around with 'The No Fucking Around Crew'"? He goes to work in cool, casual plaid J. Crew button downs, pulls out his 2010 Don Draper charm on Lively's hot mess of a towny floozy by waxing poetically about twenty dollar bills over a Bud Light, and wants to end wounded policemen's lives just so he can see Douggy get a life sentence. He is passionate, but why? We don't know because the movie doesn't care. So we, eventually don't. The narrative is equally balanced in it's lack of impact; and that is a shame because there is some good acting here (Renner), and there is wonderfully creepy claustrophobic and "duality of man" nuts and bolts action (Fenway shootout, North End car chase, the bank-robbing costumes/scenes) that ultimately ends up being a waste because of cliched dialogue (Hamm's interrogation scene--laughable) and character development that never causes the viewer to go to a place of relation with any of these people. 

Now for the "feel sorry for me, I grew up without a mother or father and crime is all I know and for some reason I have a hot headed best friend who doesn't give a FUCK about human life or anything else in this god-forsaken world other than stopping me from moving on in life and actually being happy, who we know will eventually die at the end, and we are fine with that, ya' know because they are an obstacle for me; who you should be rooting for by the way" story-line. Renner is as great as he can be in this role strictly because he becomes this person; and is so believable as Jem Coughlin (remembered his name). But his character is also someone we've seen a million times before, and that is wearisome. We all knew he'd bite the dust; and when he eventually did I only felt a split second murmur of sympathy because the best actor in the film was gone, not not necessarily the character he was playing. As far as Douggy goes in this growing up scenario, he hasn't killed anyone maliciously and has tried to be a good citizen (when not robbing banks); even almost made the pros as a hockey player. When he does finally commit murder near the end, it is just. I've always liked Ben Affleck. He is a solid actor, but he is not good enough to pull this flawed anti-hero off. The worst part is that I don't hate Doug or love him, I feel pretty much nothing for him, and if that's the case, the rest of the movie doesn't even matter.  If we are going to keep exploring this kind of protagonist on TV and film, it has to be fresh and it has to have depth where it can cause us to think in the abstract and question what is truly right and wrong in a way would have never imagined we would. Mackray's life does possess Shakespearian tragedy, but I don't feel sorry for him, and what's even more vexing is that the tone of the movie makes me think I should. With a character like this, you acknowledge the GIGANTIC flaws they posses but you also need to feel for them too for the portrayal to be successfully dynamic. But I didn't, especially when someone like Douggy had multiple chances to understand that he could leave Charlestown, but was too self-destructive and knowingly went into a line of business that could get any number of human beings killed. But the reasons for that are basically the tagline, mom died, dad bad, best friend is a thug, that's it. In the end we are left with an adequate, full on, self-conscious Boston bank heist movie that seems more concerned about juggling subplots (a little of this, a little of that), showing us Boston and its satellite towns, than really delving into a true love story that legitimately rises from the ashes of a heavily misguided child and adulthood that is based on this illegal craft that has been past down to generation after generation as a way to support a family or lifestyle that actually is not worth the risk in the end, not even close, yet it's still happening. Why is that still happening? Where is that movie? 


I'll applaud after that one.