| The Town | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Ben Affleck |
| Screenplay by |
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| Based on | Prince of Thieves byChuck Hogan |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Robert Elswit |
| Edited by | Dylan Tichenor |
| Music by | |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 124 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $37 million[2] |
| Box office | $154 million[2] |
The Town is a 2010 Americanneo-noircrime thriller film co-written and directed byBen Affleck, adapted fromChuck Hogan's 2004 novelPrince of Thieves.[3][4] The film stars Affleck,Rebecca Hall,Jon Hamm,Jeremy Renner,Blake Lively,Titus Welliver,Pete Postlethwaite,Chris Cooper andSlaine.
It features aBostonbank robber who begins to develop romantic feelings for a victim of one of his previous robberies but he hides his identity from her. Meanwhile, he and his crew set out to get one final score by robbingFenway Park.
The Town premiered at theVenice Film Festival on September 8, 2010, and was released in the United States byWarner Bros. Pictures on September 17, 2010. Based on actual events, the film received positive reviews from critics for its direction, screenplay, editing, and the performances of the cast (particularly Renner) and grossed $154 million worldwide. It received various accolades, including theNational Board of Review Award for Best Cast, as well as Best Supporting Actor nominations at theAcademy,Golden Globe,SAG (Renner), andBAFTA Awards (Postlethwaite, posthumously). The film was also honoured as one of thetop ten films of 2010 by theNational Board of Review.[5][6]
Four lifelong friends fromCharlestown, Boston—mild-mannered Doug MacRay, volatile James "Jem" Coughlin, Albert "Gloansy" MacGloan, and Desmond "Dez" Elden—rob a bank wearing latex skeleton masks. Against Doug's wishes, Jem takes bank manager Claire Keesey hostage, but later releases her unharmed.
After discovering Claire lives in their neighborhood, Doug surveils her to find out what she has told authorities, against the wishes of Jem, who believes they should simply kill her.
Doug introduces himself to Claire at a local laundromat. Claire does not recognize Doug's voice from the bank heist. Doug tells Claire of his missing mother, who probably lives with his aunt inTangerine, Florida, and of being drafted as a professionalice hockey player. She tells him of theFighting Irish leprechaun tattoo on the neck of one of the bank robbers (Jem); knowing that Jem will kill her if she reports this, Doug dissuades her from telling the FBI about the tattoo.
FBISpecial Agent Adam Frawley suspects the bank heist crew has ties to localIrish mobster Fergus "Fergie" Colm, who fronts as aflorist. During a visit to his father, Stephen, who is serving five consecutive life sentences in prison, Doug shares his plan to leave Boston for Florida.
The crew's next job is anarmored car robbery in theNorth End, for which they don latexnun masks; the job goes awry when a guard is shot, and machine gun fire and a police chase ensue. The next day, Frawley interrogates Doug and his associates but is forced to release them for lack of evidence and failure to extract a confession.
Doug asks Claire to go to Florida, and she accepts. She quits her job, unaware that Frawley haswiretapped her phone. Frawley shares Doug's criminal file with Claire, and threatens to prosecute her as an accomplice. Shocked and distraught, she breaks up with Doug.
Doug tries to back out of an upcoming $3.5 million heist atFenway Park, angering Jem and Fergie; the latter threatens to kill Claire if Doug does not partake in the robbery. Fergie reveals that he controlled Doug's father by turning Doug's mother into an addict, which ultimately led to hersuicide.
Doug reluctantly agrees to do the job, but swears he will kill Fergie if anything happens to Claire. At Fenway Park, Doug and Jem enter disguised asBoston police officers, with help from an inside accomplice, steal $3,500,000 in gate cash, and prepare to escape in an ambulance disguised asparamedics.
Unbeknownst to the crew, Frawley had used Doug's ex-girlfriend (and Jem's sister) Krista's drug addiction to turn her into an informant. The FBI, tipped off by Krista, surround the perimeter alongside police andstate troopers. Caught in ashootout withFBI SWAT agents, Dez and Gloansy are killed.Frawley later spots Jem, and Jem is wounded in their exchange of gunfire. Determined not go back to prison, he commitssuicide by cop. Doug witnesses his death before escaping in a police cruiser.
Knowing that Claire is in danger, Doug kills Fergie and his bodyguard Rusty. After contacting Claire, Doug spots the FBI with her, and she manages to warn him away. Doug escapes by donning anMBTA uniform from his uncle, and later grabs a train to Florida. Frawley deduces that Claire tipped Doug off, but has insufficient grounds to arrest her.
Later, while Claire is gardening, she finds a buried bag containing money, a tangerine, and a note from Doug suggesting she can make better use of it and that they may meet again one day. Claire donates the money, in memory of Doug's mother, to refurbish the ice hockey arena where Doug played.
From the deck of a small house, Doug looks out over the water, forlorn, but seemingly safe in Florida.
In the Alternative Cut, during his escape from Boston, Doug is confronted by the three men he and Jem assaulted in defense of Claire. One of the men asks Doug about the money (implying he knows about the heist, likely from Fergie). He and Doug argue, his partners encouraging him to kill Doug. The man is reluctant until Doug asks, "How's the leg?" at which point he shoots Doug several times in the street, leaving him to die. A later scene shows Claire, still with the money, seeing a news report of Doug's death on TV.
In 2003,Paramount Pictures had optioned the rights toChuck Hogan's novelPrince of Thieves before it was even published, andDick Wolf signed on to produce before the project fell through.[7][8] In 2006, directorAdrian Lyne brought the novel to producerGraham King. King in turn showed it toWarner Bros. studio, who agreed to make an adaptation directed by Lyne and written bySheldon Turner.[9] Lyne's vision for the project was a 3–3.5 hourMartin Scorsese-styled film with a budget of $90 million, which led to creative differences with the studio and the eventual departure of Lyne from the project.[8][10] By 2008,The Town was decided as the title and Ben Affleck, fresh off his directorial debut inGone Baby Gone, was brought in by Warner Bros. to serve as the film's star, director and co-writer.[8][11] Affleck wanted to direct a movie "I personally researched and understood", and invited high school classmate Aaron Stockard to work with him on the script. While Affleck had grown up in nearbyCambridge, Massachusetts, he barely knew the harsh inner-city environment of Charlestown. Affleck and Stockard conducted many interviews with the Charlestown community, as well as the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force in Boston.[10] Later the film's actors also researched within the community to make for more believable characters and performances. Charlestown locals also joined the cast, mostly as extras.[12]
Filming began in late August 2009 inBoston.[13] The former MASSBank branch located inMelrose, Massachusetts, was used as the location for the first robbery of the film, taking on the name Cambridge Merchants Bank[14] (the exterior shots, however, are of Cambridge Savings Bank in Harvard Square). Filming also took place atMohegan Sun inUncasville, Connecticut, for casino scenes,[15]Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Cedar Junction inWalpole, Massachusetts, for use of their visiting room, and atAnderson Regional Transportation Center inWoburn, Massachusetts, for the ending Amtrak scenes.[16]
The Town debuted at theVenice Film Festival[17] and had its American premiere at Boston'sFenway Park.[18] The film was released in the United States on September 17, 2010.[2]
The film was released onBlu-ray Disc andDVD on December 17, 2010. Both versions include special features and anaudio commentary including a look at Affleck as a director and actor. The extended/unrated version is a Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy bundle which includes 28 minutes of additional footage, taking the runtime to over 153 minutes.[19]
On March 6, 2011, the three-discThe Town: Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD/Blu-ray set was released. This set includes the previously released theatrical and extended cut Blu-ray disc as well as a second Blu-ray disc and a DVD which feature a new extended cut with an alternate, darker ending.[20]
On December 6, 2016, the film was released on4K UHD Blu-ray with the theatrical cut.[21]
On February 5, 2012, to promote the upcomingThe Town: Ultimate Collector's Edition set, theAMC LoewsBoston Common theater hosted an "exclusive engagement" ofThe Town (Take 2), wherein three showings of the film were shown with the alternate ending featured in the new home media release. Immediately preceding each screening, a vice president fromWarner Bros. Home Entertainment thanked all those in attendance, including Titus Welliver (Dino Ciampa), Dennis McLaughlin (Rusty), and Affleck's mother, for coming out and supporting director Affleck's "preferred" version of the film, leading to a short, prerecorded introduction by Affleck himself. Earlier that day, the intersection of Tremont and Avery streets was temporarily renamed "The Town Take 2 Place" in a small ceremony, attended by Welliver and Boston city officials.[22][additional citation(s) needed]
The film took #1 at the box office during its opening weekend, taking in $23.8 million.[23]The Town grossed $92.1 million in the United States and Canada with an additional $61.8 million in other territories for a total of $154 million worldwide on a production budget of $37 million.[24][2]
Onreview aggregatorRotten Tomatoes,The Town has an approval rating of 92% based on 238 reviews, with an average rating of 7.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Tense, smartly written, and wonderfully cast,The Town proves that Ben Affleck has rediscovered hismuse—and that he's a director to be reckoned with."[25]Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[26] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[27]
Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, praising Renner's performance and Affleck's direction.[28] In his review forThe New York Times,A. O. Scott commented on the opening heist, "That sequence, like most of the other action set pieces in the film, is lean, brutal, and efficient, and evidence of Mr. Affleck's skill and self-confidence as a director."[29] Xan Brooks, inThe Guardian, wrote that the action sequences were "sharply orchestrated" but added "it's a bogus, bull-headed enterprise all the same; a film that leaves no cliche untrampled."[30] Justin Chang wrote inVariety that the action scenes strike "an ideal balance between kineticism and clarity" aided by cinematographerRobert Elswit and film editorDylan Tichenor.[31]Richard Roeper of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film an A+,[32] noting that he found the film incredibly similar toMichael Mann'sHeat, which he described as "one of [his] favorite movies of all time."[33] The reviewers atSpill.com also praised one of the shootout scenes, saying "It is surely the best shootout scene we have seen in decades."[34] Writing in theSeattle Post-Intelligencer, Laremy Lengel titled his review "The Town Works Best if You Avoid the Heat", also referencing Mann's film.[35]
As a Boston-based crime drama, the film forms part of a "crime-movie subgenre" typically marked by "flavorsome accents, pungent atmosphere and fatalistic undertow", according to Chang.[31][36] Within that subgenre, which includesThe Boondock Saints,The Departed,Mystic River and Affleck'sGone Baby Gone,The Town is more of a straightforward crime-procedural and has a more optimistic outlook.[31] The film also takes influence from Boston bank robbery filmThe Friends of Eddie Coyle; several scenes inThe Town, including the release of the blindfolded hostage to walk to the water's edge, mirror sequences in this film.[37][36]
A voice in the trailer of the film says: "There are over 300 bank robberies in Boston every year. Most of these professionals live in a 1-square-mile neighborhood called Charlestown." In fact, there were 23 reported bank robberies in the entire state of Massachusetts in the first quarter of 2010, compared with 49 in Illinois and 136 in California, according to the FBI.[47]
The film drew criticism from residents of Charlestown, Boston neighborhood due to the film's promotion as being about "the bank robbery capital of America."[48] While specific robbery crime statistics were not available for the area, Greg Comcowich, Boston Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman, said it was a "pretty good conclusion", though the description was not accurate.[48]
The film ends with a written disclaimer: "Charlestown's reputation as a breeding ground for armed robbers is authentic. However, this film all but ignores the great majority of the residents of Charlestown, past and present, who are the same good and true people found most anywhere,"[49] to whom the film is dedicated.
According to a September 2010 article inThe Boston Globe, Charlestown was once known as an area where bank robbers were concentrated, but has not been since the mid-1990s, and the subject has been a sore point for "Townies". Now much of the neighborhood has beengentrified. The paper reported there is some sense of rivalry between Townies, people who lived in the historically Irish-Catholic neighborhood for decades, and "Toonies", largely white-collar workers who arrived with gentrification, but most of that has died down.[47] The film makes reference to the definition of "Toonies" during one of Doug and Claire's dates.
In the early 1990s, an increase in the number of bank and armored car robberies by Townies focused attention on Charlestown. In one heist inHudson, New Hampshire, two guards were killed, which is alluded to in the film; during a scene where Agent Frawley is briefing his task force, he mentions that Doug's father is serving life for a notorious robbery inNashua. According to Frawley, the elder MacRay hijacked a "bread truck" (armored car) up to New Hampshire, and when one of the guards saw his face, he executed both of them with their own weapons. Frawley notes that this incident led to the passing of regulations prohibiting the driver from leaving the cab even if his partner is being held at gunpoint. Charles Hogan got the idea for his novel, on which the film is based, in 1995. "It was just so remarkable that this one very small community was the focus for bank robbers," he said, but he was very aware that crime was only one part of the community, and he did not want to make all residents of the neighborhood look like criminals.[50]
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