Actor Ben Affleck directs and stars in this gritty new release.
Actor Ben Affleck's directorial debut, "Gone Baby Gone" in 2008, was a confident and much lauded independent film that garnered an Oscar nomination for Amy Ryan as the drug-addled mother of a missing boy.
Affleck's follow-up, "The Town," gets a big nationwide release, but it still has the grit and audacious spirit of an indie. Unlike the previous film, Affleck stars in the film as a Boston criminal specializing in robberies of banks and armored cars who is thinking about getting out of the business.? His ambivalence decreases when he accidentally falls in love with a hostage (Rebecca Hall) from his latest job.
The movie is directed with great skill and an appreciation for the city in all its beauty and back-alley decadence. Jeremy Renner is splendid but scary as the most sociopathic of Affleck's posse.
- Steve Walker