peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2010 11 07 TheTown

The Town

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I splurged my Palace Cinemas membership freebie at the 9:05pm screening at the dear old Verona. I've grown to like the refurbishment, especially now that the Academy Twin is history. The attraction was Ben Affleck's direction, having recently seen Gone Baby Gone.

Well, yeah. I'm less convinced about Affleck as an actor than as a director; perhaps he should have cast his brother again. This is essentially a heist movie, trying to evoke a sense of community, milking the product-of-where-you-came-from meme. It is solid but not as good as Gone Baby Gone; the extra fireworks rob it of much moral complexity, and it is tad too predictably macho. Casting Postlethwaite invites a losing comparison against The Usual Suspects.

Again the female characters are underwritten; one could imagine Claire (Rebecca Hall) being a bit ballsier rather than caving (to Doug, to the FBI, etc.), and what happened to Irish omerta with Krista?

The contrasting Fairfax reviews by Byrnes and Schembri must say something about how Sydneysiders and Melbournites view themselves. Dana Stevens is a bit more scathing.