I really liked Gone Baby Gone, The Departed, and Good Will Hunting.
I admittedly liked The Town the first couple of times I saw it, when it was out in the theatres, but, after watching it several more times on DVD, in my computer...eh.....not so much. I began to take a more negative outlook towards The Town, in an about face, if one gets the drift.
I also might add that almost nobody, including Matt Damon, really likes Ben Affleck anymore.
The Town really didn't hold up with Gone Baby Gone, and, Affleck, who played Doug MacRay, who was the ringleader of the men who took Claire Keesey(Rebecca Hall) hostage, was not the decent, goodhearted guy that he comes off as, at all. He is, in fact, a smooth-talking, sweet-talking, conniving individual, who put the romance moves on Claire for one reason; to keep her silent and to make absolutely sure that she wouldn't talk to the Feds. Sure, Doug MacRay found Claire attractive, all right; an attractive but gullible woman that he could bait and exploit, so that he'd gain her trust, so that she'd never call the cops on Doug and his gang.
Moreover, Claire was gullible enough or willfully stupid enough to allow Doug to sweet-talk her and set a trap for her, after he and his guys had victimized her by forcing her to open the bank vault under duress, at gunpoint, and then taking her hostage.
You've got a point, jaden101. The characters were extremely underdeveloped, and were played by mediocre actors and actresses, at best. Frankly, however, I ended up disliking Claire more than any of the other characters in the film, because of her pretentiousness and her willful arrogance and stupidity. I also might add that it's not surprising that Doug's men were gunned down by the Feds.
Your post about The Town is spot-on, jinXed by JaNX. The Town was very overrated, and, since I, too, am a fan of action/crime movies, there was too much of the boring parts, such as the Doug/Claire romance, underdeveloped characters played by mediocre actors/actresses, and the film was rather junky, overall. The Fenway Heists and the car chase and shoot-out scenes in the North End were very overblown, and the ending was phony as anything. Frankly, I give this movie a 2 or 3 rating out of ten at the most.
That is a pretty cynical look on the motivations of Ben Affleck's character, and one that is pretty emphatically untrue. He started a relationship with her because he liked her, and frankly it wasn't even that beneficial too him, seeing her put him and his entire crew at risk and he new that. The only thing he gained was telling her to hold onto the information about the tattoo until she was ready to tell the cops and that she didn't need to fell obligated to do so. Making sure she wouldn't go to the police was the reason he met her initially in that laundry mat, (the real reason was to give his friends some peace of mind so the lunatic didn't go off an kill her, but I'll throw you a bone) but not the reason he started dating her... that is made pretty clear in the movie.
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I have to disagree, srankmissingnin. I believe that this is a matter of opinion. I think that Doug really did set Claire up. No guy takes a woman hostage and then falls in love with her. I really do think that Doug exploited Claire, in order to get one thing out of her; a promise that she wouldn't talk to the Feds, which he got. Claire was also rather stupid to stick with Doug even after learning that he was one of the guys who robbed her bank at gunpoint and took her as a hostage. Claire, imho, should've gone to Agt. Frawley for help, instead of traipsing around with an armed felon (Doug MacRay), who was also a wanted fugitive.
One is supposed to believe that Doug MacRay was a good guy at heart who screwed up, and that he really cared about Claire's welfare, but he was just interested in protecting his friends' and his own flanks, so that they wouldn't end up going back to prison. I also might add that it was Jem's sister and Doug's ex-girlfriend, Krista, who ratted Doug and his men out to the Feds, not Claire. Frankly, although I don't advocate Krista's sordid lifestyle, I'd give her a medal in a heartbeat for ratting Doug and his men out. They deserved it.
Oh, and how can so many people have missed the fact that the reasons that Doug ultimately skipped town for Florida were:
A) He was an armed felon and wanted fugitive who was on the lam from the law
B) Doug had gotten what he really wanted out of Claire; a promise not to squeal to the Feds.
C) Doug knew, at some level, that sooner or later, he'd be hunted down by the Feds, caught and either sent to prison, or possibly gunned down by the law, and that Claire would be in the line of fire.
Why, oh why do so many people fall for such a hyped-up, cheap, overrated, trashy movie such as The Town, and, more to the point, refuse to accept dissenting opinions on it? _It beats me...I don't know! _
I admit to one thing, however: _The Town left me rooting for the cops and the FBI, especially Agt. Adam Frawley and wanting them to catch Doug MacRay and his men _and send them to jail for their crimes, and to have Claire either criminally prosecuted herself for being an accessory to Doug's crimes and for tipping him Doug off with a "sunny days" code and enabling him to elude the law, or at least put on some sort of probation for her bullshit. _Sure, I sympathized with Claire at first, because she was the victim of an armed bank robbery, which wasn't her fault, but I completely lost my sympathy for her when she not only got involved, wholesale, in _a romance with Doug, but refused to sever all contacts with him even after she learned through Agt. Frawley who Doug MacRay really was, and what he was up to.. _Unlike most people, who are sympathetic with Ben Affleck's character in that film, and with Claire, I am not.
Why should I be sympathetic to either Doug or Claire? _The idea that Doug MacRay wanted to change and redeem himself through Claire is utter bullshit, especially after he engaged in an act of vigilantism by going back to Charlestown, taking the law into his own hands, and gunning down Rusty and Fergie just because they threatened Doug's ladygirl Claire with physical harm. _Come on now! Doug MacRay's still a professional criminal and he was not the decent guy he came across as when he and Claire met "by chance" in a C-Town laundromat.
Doug MacRay, like his friends and partners in crime, are not only skilled, disciplined and ruthless in their quest for quick money through parasitic behaviors such as armed robbery, and who'd unquestionably kill or seriously injure people enough to put them in the hospital if they're considered obstacles to what they want, but Doug knows how to come across as a nice guy, when he's really not. _He may not be crazy like his best friend and righthand man, Jem, but he's a sociopath and a person of unprovoked violence just the same. _The fact that he came across as such a nice, charming guy and deceived Claire by pretending to be an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, when he's really not, is more than disgusting...it's part of his criminal behavior. _As for Claire, the fact that she took Doug's bait and rose to it is pathetic indeed.
If Doug had really wanted to change, imo, he would've turned himself and his guys in, come forward, negociated with the Feds for some protection for him and Claire, and stopped heisting once and for all. _ Doug left for Florida without Claire for two reasons: _
A) _Doug macRay was an armed felon and wanted fugitive who'd been on the lam from the law for quite awhile, plus he'd just killed Fergie and Rusty.
B) Doug had gotten what he really wanted out of Claire all along; _a promise from her not to turn him in, which he got.
How can so many people be so naive or willfully stupid as to miss that?
Also, if Doug wanted to redeem himself, he would've come forward, served his time, and after a prison term, found honest ways to raise the funding for the renovation for the C-Town hockey rink himself, instead of using Claire Keesey as a go-between. _What people don't realize is that Doug wasn't a nice guy...even to Claire, even though most people firmly believe that. _ The fact that he deceived her, seduced her and made a total fool out of her was vicious. _The fact that Claire acted like a poor, confused, dumb-assed adolescent and allowed herself to be manipulated, made a fool out of and taken advantage of by Doug is pitiful, but she doesn't deserve pity, due to the fact that she helped the very guy who turned her life upside down and caused her a ton of grief in the first place escape the law. _
Now that I think of it, I wouldn't cared one iota if Doug and Claire had either ended up in jail, or been shot and thrown into the Charles or the Mystic River. _An awful thing for me to say, but that's how disgusted I am with this kind of thing.
As for Kristina, well, I don't like her sordid lifestyle or behavior (drug and alcohol addiction, sleeping around with too many men, and the fact that she was in the business herself by helping to book hotel rooms and get costumes for Doug and his men, and being a drug mule for Fergie and Rusty), but i'll say this: _I feel kind of sorry for Krista, in a way, because she had far fewer choices than Claire; _she'd grown up with Doug and Jem, who, like many other men, abused and exploited her for their own ends. _Krista's daughter, Shyne, still an infant, caught in the middle of all this shit, was innocent, and I felt sorry for her, too.
I'm so sick of people saying that what the white collar criminals (not defending them, btw) are worse than guys like Doug MacRay and his gang, because it's unrelated, and not true. _
Neither the book Prince of Thieves, on which The Town was based, or the movie, make any effort to get at causes of bank robbery and other crimes, and the circumstances _under which Doug and his men had grown up under. _Moreover, the movie asks the audience to sympathize with Doug MacRay and his men, as well as Claire, who acted stupidly enough to allow Doug to take advantage of her, and who became an accessory to his crimes, while considering law enforcement officials assigned to bring criminals like MacRay and company to their knees and have them locked up in penetentiaries once and for all.
Dez was a smart (he was college-educated and had a regular job) but stupid guy; _he was pretty much just along for the ride, and did what he was told to do by the gang, and yet, at the same time, he seemed to be pretty much their victim, as well, if one gets the drift. _Dez allowed himself to be taken for a ride, also. _
At least the book fleshes out the characters and spends more time on Dez and Krista, and doesn't focus on the viewpoint of Doug and Jem so much, plus the book takes a far less sympathetic outlook towards Doug and his men. _
Sorry, folks, but I can't bring myself to like this film, except for the very beginning.
Last edited by mapol on Jun 11th, 2012 at 01:25 PM
I disagree. The acting, especially on the part of Ben Affleck, wasn't that good, and I liked the very beginning of The Town, with the aerial and ground shots of Boston's Charlestown section, as well as the opening bank heist. For me, however, The Town went from being okay to being just plain bad, in a matter of minutes.
Last edited by mapol on Jun 11th, 2012 at 01:37 PM
Jeremy Renner was the only convincing actor in The Town. I also might add that The Town conveys an extremely troubling message, to me:
The Town also normalizes the Stockholm Syndrome and its inverse, the Lima Syndrome. One doesn't have to be in any of the helping professions (i. e. psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, etc.) to realize that, while a person who's taken hostage and falls victim to the Stockholm Syndrome (i. e. falling in love with her captor) or the Lima Syndrome (i. e. accepting the overtures of her captor, who falls in love with her), presumably has a better chance of survival in a hostage situation, the victim, in either case, is turned into a person who is at her captor's beck and call, is manipulated and controlled by him, and is essentially brainwashed into believing that her captor cares enough about her not to kill her, and that he'll always treat her kindly and not abuse her. This couldn't be farther from the truth, especially because, all too often, the victim is isolated from her friends and loved ones, and begins to blame law officials and other authorities for her troubles and turn against them rather than her captor who committed this criminal act against her in the first place.
That being said, I'd say that common sense is required, in order to at least minimize the possibility of having something like that happen to him or her; Just because one meets a charming guy or gal, doesn't mean that they're necessarily out for any good, particularly if one is in an area that's known to be tough, with a violent history to it. Anybody who meets someone that they've never seen before, no matter where they are, or how charming they may be, should be much more careful, and not be so quick to accept dates with someone or get into things with people they don't know that well.
Claire was a woman who used no common sense what. so. ever, and she ended up having a breakdown when it finally backfired on her. Hey...if I'd known her in real life, I'd tell her.."Hey..don't you understand that if you play with fire, you're going to get burned? Think about that!"
Supposed the bank manager hadn't been as angelic-looking as Claire, or had been someone with a learning/developmental disability such as autism, Aspergers, dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, or a seizure disorder? Do people honestly believe that Doug and his men would've even acted the least bit charming and sympathetic towards her? I don't think so. Doug would've allowed Jem to do whatever he wanted with her, and she probably would've been gang-raped or "offed" by Doug and his posse of armed criminals. Don't kid yourselves, guys!
Doug, contrary to how he came across to Claire, wasn't a nice guy, even to her. He was playing her, and anybody who thinks that Doug and his men wouldn't have hesitated to kill her if she'd even shown signs of resisting, and refused to comply with them in any way, is just kidding him or herself.
Last edited by mapol on Jun 11th, 2012 at 01:54 PM
Amazing how much this movie has been picked apart because of the "human relations" issues with it. Were the guys in the crew from Heat nice, kind-hearted gentlemen? No, they too were ready to do whatever it took to get the money yet most people didn't want to see them all dead at the end of the movie.
Maybe it's just because discussions weren't so easy to have back in the day but I can't help wondering if some films would be so widely acclaimed as they are had they been released now. Just my take on it.
I've seen the extended cut of the movie and it's really great!!
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