Blue Collar Professionalism: A Review of ‘The Town’

Armoured car robberies. Divided loyalties. Love across social boundaries. A single-minded FBI agent. These are not elements which sound fresh, even if they do instantly push reliable buttons of escapist entertainment. If Michael Mann did not put a lid on the genre with Heat, then surely David Mamet did with Heist? The former expanded everything to an epic framework of isolationist emptiness, the latter honed in on the mechanics of the con and found them to be hollow too. But the heist film lives on, and is now tackled by Ben Affleck in his follow-up to his debut Gone Baby Gone. The Town is a disappointment, but it’s an immersive one.

Affleck casts himself in the lead role, a Charlestown, Boston native and professional bank robber. Not that professionalism is the focus of the film: the details in the robbery sequences (microwaving security tapes, bleaching away prints and fibres) are engrossing, but there are no meticulous scenes of planning and organisation. This is a day-job for Affleck’s Doug MacRay and his gang: they’re normal people, not single-minded automatons. This allows the film to ground itself in the everyday existence of the characters, their barbecues and casual social connections. Like the Boston neighbourhood of Gone, Baby, Gone, Charlestown is here a grim and hopeless place which nevertheless the residents take deep pride in (“like it was something they’d accomplished”).

This focus on a locality, as well as the criminal milieu and downbeat plotting, call to mind Antoine Fuqua’s recent Brooklyn’s Finest, and The Town suffers from many of the same problems. Fuqua is better at sloshing in the dark dramatic pulse of the seediness he depicts; Affleck’s skill is the perhaps more mature even-handed depiction of protagonists that would be turned into caricatures by a director with less understanding of his setting (Affleck grew up in a nearby neighbourhood). Such an approach harkens back to similar American thrillers of the 1970s, films like Cruising and The French Connection, in which criminal activity was endemic of social disenfranchisement.

For my money Affleck’s debut was better at revealing the tension between glossy narrative simplification (bound up with media saturation) on the one hand, and personal moral imperatives on the other. When, in The Town, a character who is being forced to betray a friend asserts “I’m a person”, it’s the cry of a character in a genre piece trying to be more than the mechanics of her role in the drama. This is a fascinating approach to the issue of realism and drama, and it bubbles away beneath the surface throughout (once again Affleck uses the CSI series as an abutment to his own methodology).

As a technical exercise, it is in the film’s final third that it most impresses. A robbery at a Boston landmark devolves into a gun battle which can stand amongst cinema’s best, even though there is the lingering suspicion that the pyrotechnics are undermining good work elsewhere. When Neil McCauley moves to kill a member of his gang who betrayed him in Heat it is an expression of his newfound personal freedom; when The Town begins moving in the same circles, it feels like lazy playing to the gallery.

As a consolidation piece (of Affleck's directorial skill, of Jeremy Renner's credentials as an angry young sociopath, of Boston's de facto positioning as recession era every-America) there is much to admire. Indeed, while it feels unremarkable for much of its running time, it has been two days since I visited The Town and I'm itching to go back, fearing I missed of neglected some of its subtler topography. This alone makes it the best splashy American crime offering for some time.

Take The Edge Off: A Review of 'Edge of Darkness'

In the pilot episode of the BBC television serial ‘Edge of Darkness’ from 1985, the father of a woman who has been gunned down is consoled by a co-worker. This co-worker herself breaks down and begins to cry. The father, police detective Thomas Craven, gently hugs her in return, but morosely asks her to stop crying, “otherwise we’ll all be at it.” This scene does not occur in the blockbuster film remake of the show, and if it did then star Mel Gibson would probably shoot the woman for getting in his way. Thomas Craven is no longer a downbeat stoic Northerner, but a brashly Catholic Bostonian. So too the story is no longer a meticulous revelation of human frailty and corruption, but a conspiracy thriller.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these changes, and the first hour or so of the film is strong. The relationship between Craven and his daughter is believable, his grief at her death effective, and the suggestion of corporate malfeasance intriguing. Director Martin Campbell was also behind the original show, and the introduction of both the Boston setting and writer William Monahan to the mix are successful. Themes of parentage and mortality surface, and a quiet conversation at a kitchen table is frankly superb.

Then, at around the halfway point, there is a shocking car accident which strains credulity to breaking point. From here, it’s only a matter of time before cabals of villains plot and scheme, friends become betrayers, and Craven goes renegade with just a gun and a snarl.

The shift in the final reel is so out of keeping with what has occurred before that it might yet be a big joke. Suffice to say, anyone struggling to conclude their own screenplays concerning labyrinthine mazes of incident and intent could take a leaf out of Monahan’s book, but only if they’re willing to write the phrase “then he gets shot in the head” a few dozen times. I have previously been a great fan of his work in ‘The Departed’ and ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, and while he sprinkles references to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Diogenes throughout ‘Edge of Darkness’, it’s clear Monahan has no handle on the story he’s telling or what it’s trying to say. The original was about British anxieties concerning nuclear power and the political manoeuvring of labour unions; what the 2010 version is about is anybody’s guess. (Perhaps the absurd illogic at the centre of the conspiracy is intentional, and the whole thing is actually a parody.)

Taken on its own terms, the film should perhaps be seen with an even dimmer view. Ray Winstone masters the sly black ops man he is given, but is then given nothing to do for much of the time. An awareness of the consequences of the frequent violent altercations is hinted at, but then never addressed. It is fair to assume that these problems stem from the re-shoots asked by the studio, which result in utterly pointless kidnappings and nauseating moral lurches. Yet, the studio is ‘Icon Productions’, whose figurehead is Mel Gibson – surely he knew what he was signing up for? Of all the praiseworthy things that can – and should – be claimed of the 1985 serial, that it has commercial viability and brand recognition surely are not among them.

Much like the Hollywood version of ‘State of Play’, another British television series, too much happens too fast and not a lot feels like it makes any sense, which is a consequence of condensing six hours of story into two, and adding gunfights. Perhaps it is time for traffic to move the other way, and for the BBC to create a compelling six-part drama from the screenplay for ‘Payback’, or a subdued political chamber-piece from ‘Commando’. Or maybe ITV could produce a 90-minute action film based on seasons 1 – 3 of ‘The Wire’.

At least such experiments would generate more of a reaction than stunned disappointment, ebbing away into resigned apathy.