Almost Criminal
THE TOWN
Directed by Ben Affleck
Runtime: 123 min.
MARTIN SCORSESES PILOT episode for the TV series Boardwalk Empire finally gives HBO what the cable network has been faking for years: a sense of cinema. Scorsese gives it filmic qualities that have been degraded by most television production practices; qualities that are almost infinitesimal but realas in the je ne sais quoi of a weirdly sumptuous New Years Eve celebration where cascading black balloons convey an impending social disaster as a culture celebrates its self-destruction.
Thats how Scorsese depicts the onset of Prohibition in this series about bootlegging in 1920 Atlantic City. Through camera pacing, lurch-pause montages and subtly expressive acting, Scorsese finesses the social corruption hes previously practiced in too many theatrical films but that almost every HBO series from The Sopranos to Deadwood to True Blood has tried imitatingunfortunately with TV directors who trivialize Scorsesean violence and make ethnic vulgarity blatant.
That TV-style blatancy now infects real movies, as can be seen in The Town, the second film directed by Ben Affleck in a crude, HBO style that should not pass for cinema. Affleck sets up the tale of Boston Irish bankrobbers in imitation of Scorseses The Departed, but without the aesthetic finesse to even give an impression of depth. The Town is nearly as ludicrous as his debut Gone Baby Goneanother poison pen letter to Beantown.
The Boardwalk Empire pilot has flashes of emotional authenticity such as Steve Buscemis duplicitous pol and Michael Pitts ambitious racketeer. Pitts a low-rent DiCaprio who easily sleazes a post-WWI decadence, a version of the self-loathing Scorseses theatrical films have over-mythologized. But is there a real character anywhere in The Town? Is it Doug MacRay (played by Ben Affleck), the potential hockey star from Bostons Irish ghetto who reverts to neighborhoodtype and becomes a bankrobbing thug?
Or Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall), the willowy middle-class girl abducted during Dougs robbery who falls in love with him? Agent Frawley (Jon Hamm) the ruthless, unshaven Marlboro Man FBI agent who plays the lovers against each other? Jem (Jeremy Renner), the psychotic homeboy desperate to keep Doug at his own miscreant level?
Answer: None of these stereotypes, handed down from The Departed by way of Mystic River, are real characters. Thats because The Town, directed and co-written by Affleck, uses that same exploitative, pseudo-naturalistic expression HBO now takes for verisimilitude. Using his actors
sentimentality, Affleck pretends to tell the truth about the rough working-class world: Bostons Charlestown section living by its pitiful Irish Omerta, same as Boardwalk Empire. But by reducing cultural specifics to criminal statistics, Affleck commits the ultimate middle-class condescension. His tightly grasped clichés (theres even time-lapse clouds to show inexorable fate) means hes merely enjoying the low-life heist film conventions, glossing over how poverty corrupts.
The familiarity of these clichés explains the critical raves for Afflecks two directorial stints. Given their specious ethnic subject matter, it is necessary to point out the mainstream medias preference for this heist fantasy over the superior Takers as proof of racial preference; critics swallow Afflecks thuggish pieties while ignoring the ethnic details in Takers and dismissing director John Luessenhops splendid distillation of genre form that gave it speed and complexity. But in The Town, plot and characterization are slowed down to idiotbox pace and banality. Its not even as good as Boardwalk Empire, which improves on Gangs of New York but still isnt as good as Scorseses old classic.
The Town isnt really about ethnography as Scorseses Mean Streets personally incorporated into film noir; it merely romanticizes underclass degradation. The Town vulgarizes the Beantown mythology of Good Will Hunting. When Doug displays legal expertise to Claire, his explanationI watch a lot of TV, CSI, all the CSIs, and Bonesreveals the films actual source. Affleck speaks a Boston accent using a clenched, Adam Sandler voice that only draws attention to his love-struck palooka shtick. Dougs attracted to Claires class, yet the idea is so contrived its never suggested that she could be attracted to his. Instead, the films real interest lies in the loud, violent crime scenesfaking social observation but essentially appealing to the criminal element. The Town is so phony it makes Scorsese seem sincere.