The Town review (futuremovies.co.uk)

Ben Affleck’s 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone was both a brilliant thriller and an authentic representation of the Boston neighbourhood that Affleck knows; it was keenly-observed and morally complex - the polar opposite of many of his prior appearances in front of the camera (Surviving Christmas, anyone?) – but it was criminally underseen here in the UK. This was partly due to its delayed release (its ‘missing girl’ plot was similar to the Madeleine McCann case), and partly because its toplining star, Affleck’s little bro Casey, is not as big a box-office draw as his older brother, despite being arguably the better actor.

So Affleck has ensured his second offering will be harder for audiences to ignore, putting himself front and centre and enrolling one of the most recognisable men on TV, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, as his opposite. It’s worked in the US, where The Town is currently top of the box office, and piling up the positive critical notices. And while this story of Boston bank robbers isn’t quite up to the standard of his debut, it’s still a great crime drama full of superbly-realised characters, and confirms that Ben Affleck, director, is here to stay.

As with Gone Baby Gone, The Town is based on a novel (Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan), and focuses on characters in a particular Boston district. As the film begins, title quotes inform us that Charlestown has produced more bank-robbers than any other city in the world, that robbing banks is a way of life in Charlestown, and that the man who tries to break the mould will have troubles indeed. The story that follows essentially dramatises and fleshes out those statements in the character of Doug MacRay (Affleck), a local who could have had a career as a professional ice hockey player but for a few bad choices, and so instead applies himself, very successfully, to bank robbery.

MacRay’s best friend and partner-in-crime Jim (The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner, on electrifying form) is the chaotic opposite to Doug’s carefully composed calm, and during the exceptionally well-crafted robbery that kicks off the movie Jim spontaneously takes a hostage; bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall). They release her unharmed, but on discovering she lives in their neighbourhood sense the possibility of being caught. Meanwhile FBI agent Adam Frawley (Hamm) is putting the pieces together and closing in on MacRay’s gang. MacRay contrives to meet and befriend Claire, with a view to discovering the likelihood of her identifying them, but a connection immediately sparks between them, and he starts to imagine that she may represent a last chance for him to get out of Charlestown and start afresh.

One of the things that was so surprising and impressive about Gone Baby Gone was Affleck’s clearly-conveyed interest in ordinary people living their lives, and this again comes through in The Town. Affleck demonstrates his filmmaking muscle with an incredibly gripping action sequence in the middle of the film, but for the greater part of the running time he focuses on the subtler dramas, the choices his characters have to make and, as one character puts it, “the price we have to pay”. This is obviously central to the characterisation of MacRay - Affleck’s best performance in years, by the way – but it also underpins Hamm’s excellent portrayal of Frawley, who subtly develops from the straight-up ‘good guy’ agent into a more complicated character with agendas of his own.

The downside is that Affleck doesn’t keep a tight reign on bringing these dramas together in the film as a whole; the plot has a fair amount of ragged edges and unresolved aspects, suggesting that some hefty cutting may have gone on to keep the finished film around the 2-hour mark (Blake Lively’s character feels particularly underdeveloped). The story’s neat conclusion is also disappointing after such a satisfyingly complex character study, and makes one wonder where Affleck and his co-writers Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard might have taken things had they been free from studio restraints.

The cast can’t be faulted though, and judged on performances alone, The Town is one of the best studio films of the year. And just as in Gone Baby Gone, Affleck ices the cake with a pair of dramatic heavyweights in small but vital roles, and Chris Cooper and Pete Postlethwaite make the same kind of impact here that Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris did in his former film. Cooper in particular makes a powerful impression in his single-scene appearance, offering an image of a possible dark future for MacRay that doesn’t fade easily from memory.

7/10

The Town is released on 24th September. This review first published on FutureMovies.co.uk.

Robin Hood (futuremovies.co.uk)

Ridley Scott’s timing couldn’t be better. In a week that’s seen a new Prime Minister assuming power thanks to a political system that has failed its people, it’s strangely appropriate to be reminded of England’s most famous outlaw. From the film’s opening scrawl citing a ‘time when kings were tyrants’ to the story’s central theme of individual liberty and the importance of rulers listening to their people, Scott’s take on the legendary figure offers plenty of moments to provoke chuckles of contemporary recognition, and perhaps even hopes that we had our own Robin Hood in action today.

But whether we would want this Robin Hood, or Robin Longstride, as he is renamed here, is debatable. The trailer promised a version of the story that we’d never been told before, and Scott and writer Brian Helgeland make good on that claim; this story ends where most previous tellings have begun, with Robin declared an outlaw and hiding out in Sherwood Forest. But Scott’s film also inadvertently makes plain why this part of Robin’s life is usually confined to backstory; it’s not that interesting, and Robin himself doesn’t actually do much in it. We’re used to seeing Robin Hood as a decisive leader of men and a dashing romantic hero, but here he is redrawn as a man carried along by the tides of circumstance, a small pawn in a much bigger political game.

This may well be a truer historical depiction of the real Robin Hood, if there ever was one, but it’s not the stuff of enduring cinema. For all his drawling Americanisms, Kevin Costner’s version of Robin, in 1991’s great fun Prince of Thieves, earned his place in movie history by firing that flaming arrow in slow-motion and making that heroic roof-top dive through a stained-glass window. The Robin that we meet here (Russell Crowe, excellent as always) has none of that heroism or heart. That’s intentional of course; Scott is trying to show us what made Robin change from a man living only for himself to a man willing to live and die for his woman and his people. The problem is that, in the larger historical context that Scott offers, Robin’s story just doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

Unsurprisingly, it’s in creating that larger context that Scott really succeeds, because he is a truly great film director, and given a big enough canvas he can bring a whole world to life. He has that canvas in 12th Century England, and he establishes the world with the same structure as he did in Gladiator; a huge, brilliantly depicted battle, followed by a mass of scenes that set up the fraught political situation in the country and skilfully introduce us to all the story’s main characters. There’s a lot of drama and intrigue to enjoy, and a host of great actors, including a fantastic Max von Sydow, playing it out. 

Ultimately though, all this compelling background can’t make up for the gaping hole at the centre of the movie. Robin is a bystander in his own film: both Matthew Macfadyen’s Sheriff of Nottingham and Mark Strong’s villainous Godfrey are hardly aware of Robin’s existence, giving him no great enemy to conflict with, while his courtship with Marion (Cate Blanchett) is forced – literally – and fledgling, giving him no passionate romance to pursue. In their efforts to do something new and different with the Robin Hood character, Scott and his merry band of filmmakers have robbed him of everything that made him great.

6/10

Robin Hood is out now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.