The Town: While this movie strives to be just like “Heat”, it ends up a lot more like “Warmth”, as it doesn’t quite reach the heights it is shooting for. Ben Affleck directs and stars in this story of 4 Irish-American bank robbers from the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston who find themselves under the microscope of the FBI after their most recent robbery. Doug Macray (Affleck) is the brains of the operation, while Jimmy Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) is his childhood friend with a wide violent streak. Born and raised in a culture of crime and violence, they take a bank manager hostage during their robbery (Rebecca Hall) that Macray begins to romance, driving a wedge between the friends, as they continue to pull riskier and riskier jobs, culminating in a heist at Fenway Park. Jon Hamm, Blake Lively, Chris Cooper, and Pete Postlethwaite are here in support. The plot is okay, nothing new on the table, but it is executed cleanly. Most of the characters are underdeveloped (outside of Renner, Hall, Affleck, and Hamm, you know next to nothing about anyone else) and some of the dialogue is bit trite. The action set pieces are a highlight, including the Fenway heist and a high-speed chase involving a mini-van winding through the narrow streets of north Boston, with the crew dressed as nuns running and gunning with the cops. Not as good as Affleck’s first directorial effort, “Gone Baby Gone”, but that can be attributed to the strength of the source material. A tad overlong, but enjoyable. Woodchuck sez, “Good, but not exceptional.”
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