I was expecting a lot more from this film than it delivered. What I liked were the supporting cast performances, chiefly Jeremy Renner's performance as the "like a brother", who will not be going back to Walpole any time soon. Next in line were the stellar performances of Blake Lively, Chris Cooper, Pete Postlethwaite, and a surprisingly good showing from Albert Magloan, as the curiously happy driver. Jon Hamm played a very stiff and believable FBI agent. What I could have done without, was the writer and star of the movie, Ben Affleck. I found his character malformed, uninteresting and his portrayal uninspired and lackluster. He dragged through this movie like an anchor in soft sand during choppy surf. About the time I started praying that he was going to be blown into a million bits of shredded and unneeded flesh, I checked my watch and saw that I still had another forty five minutes to go. Oh No! Affleck was so bad that it ruined the performance of Rebecca Hall, who might very well be a good actress, but we certainly weren't given the opportunity to find out in this film. Further, Affleck's ego is so overblown that he couldn't just let his character die in a blaze of gunfire the way he should have. Oh no, he had to escape to a southern bayou with a half a sack full of cash, so I'm sure there will be a "The Town II" coming to a theatre near you soon. Now consider this plot line disaster for a moment. Every cop in the city is looking for this guy because he just shot up a bunch of policemen, so the Boston PD sends men to Logan and Bradley airports (Bradley is over an hour and a half away) to wait for him, but they forget to send even one patrolman to South Street Station, the only place where one can board the Amtrak out of 'The Town'? It's hard to believe that Affleck would even try to pull that obvious plot flaw over on anyone, because South Street Station is exactly where any reasonably sane law enforcement professional would begin looking for a fleeing suspect. No one can escape by air anymore, this isn't the 70's, and you can't waltz onto an airplane carrying half a sack full of cash and an AR-15. Even the Boston PD would probably agree that you can't get most firearms past the TSA, thus to leave 'The Town', extended rail or car would have been the only options for a fleeing suspect. I was ready to shoot myself by this point. If there is one thing that they "got right" in this movie, it was when a cop on 'construction detail' plainly saw the robbers dressed as nuns and just looked the other way. However, that brings up another great plot flaw
did that cop not have his police radio on? Was he not listening to all the chatter on the radio that there was an armored car heist, huge gunfight, and police chase going on right on the other side of the river and that the fleeing criminals were crossing the Charlestown bridge and coming right down his throat? Simply unbelievable, due to all the plot flaws.
Review of The Town
