The Town

Ok, so I went to see "The Town" today. Or as they may say in the East End of Glasgow "Tha' Toon".

It's Ben Affleck's 4th outing as a Director (if you include 2 shorts). Having not seen a Film Starring Ben Affleck for some time (I believe the last one I watched was Changing Lanes) I was eager to see how good (or bad) his latest starring role was.

I must say, I was very pleasantly surprised.

I'm not saying that I think he's a crap actor. I genuinely like him as I'm a big Kevin Smith fan (admittedly Jersey Girl wasn't the best I've seen and fell far short of what he's capable of) and particularly like the "Jersey" films. But I digress. We're not here to talk about Kevin Smith films.

If you've seen the trailer then you know the basic plot. Four guys rob a bank and take the female manager hostage. The Leading character played by Affleck then falls for the manager and decides that he wants to go straight. Of course his childhood friend and partner in crime Jim, played by Jeremy Renner whom you may have seen as the lead in The Hurt Locker, doesn't like this. Nor does the local crime boss (Pete Postlethwaite with an Irish accent).

I don't like giving much of the story away but as is the case in many other film like this, Affleck's character is given no option but to either do one more job, or face his girlfriend being killed.

Nice guys he hangs about with eh?

If you like heist films as I do, then this will not disappoint. It's gritty, the bank robbery scenes are fast paced and are much more realistic than other bank heist that try to be almost James Bond-ish. I can say it is more realistic based on my zero experience of robbing banks with automatic weapons. The closest I've came to robbing a bank is getting a couple of bank charges refunded. It's usually them robbing me.

All in all it's a very good film. Ben Affleck has been previously accused of being, well, wooden in some of his previous performances. It certainly is not the case here. It's a far more serious role than most that he has done.

Go and see it!

I didn't spot Matt Damon in it. Don't they do everything together?