Title: The Town Director: Ben Affleck Starring: Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall, Blake Likely, Jeremy Renner, Pete Postlethwaite, Chris Cooper Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Genre(s): Action Rated:       (For strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and drug use)   Buy From Amazon.com: DVD / BluRay / Soundtrack / Novel

CONSUMER ADVICE

Parents, there is a substantial amount of hard violence and lanuage in this movie.Recommended for ages 17 and up.

I think it’s time to admit that Ben Affleck is a great director in the making. As an actor…eh, I’ve seen better. But in his new film “The Town” Affleck shows that he has a knack for style, editing, and pacing that is worthy of Scorsese. That may sound like overkill but compare some of the bank heist scenes in this film to some of Scorsese’s action scenes in “The Departed” and you’ll see that they are very comparable in quality. Actually Affleck double surprises me because his performance as Doug MacRay strikes me as Oscar-worthy. This from a guy I considered to be a consistently average actor at best. The story is a simple one that’s been told before.

Essentially Doug is a professional bank robber. He leads a team of highly organized bank robbers who are fast, efficient, and organized. During one robbery they decide to take a hostage with them and – once clear from danger – let her go. The problem is she turns out to be a local who might run across one of them and recognize them somehow. Yes she was blindfolded, but she could still hear them. Doug makes it his duty to confirm whether she is a threat or not. When he assesses that she is no threat he is shocked to find himself falling in love with her and comes under the illusion that he can have a normal relationship and continue to do what he does.

Course his best friend Jem (Jeremy Ronner) knows this can’t be. They are criminals. Criminals who steal and murder for a living. They work for a crime boss. The mere fact that this girl was once a hostage is a conflict of interest. As for the woman herself, she has no idea that the man she is dating was responsible for the back robbery that is causing her lots of post traumatic stress. All the while the FBI is hot on both their trails. If this all sounds complicated then it’s because it is. Affleck also helped pen the screenplay and makes a story that’s been told before exciting again. The bank robbing scenes alone would be worth recommending this film.

They are tightly shot and edited, creating tension and excitement at the same time. The characters relationships with each other are complicated and fascinated. The acting is stellar and likely to garner some Academy Award recognition by the end of the year. With this and “Gone Baby Gone” Affleck shows that he knows how to film crime films set in Boston. Now that I know he has the directing skills I’d like to see him direct some more personal films and maybe even a big budget epic somewhere down the road. Like Ron Howard can attest, there is a certain satisfaction of going from being an average actor to being a great director.

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