It’s fairly easy to write a review about a movie that I liked, it’s even easier to write one about one that I didn’t. (Is that wrong?) I now find myself, possibly for the first time, trying to write a little blurb about a movie that I’m quite sure I will soon forget about completely. (Great Lorin, that’ll have them eager for more…) No wait! Don’t go yet. You’re probably the only one who is still reading this and we’ve got to get through this together, just you and me okay?
I guess the thing that made me decide to go see The Town was reading something to the effect of “after a summer filled with the usual kids movies about talking animals and princesses, fan boy fueled block busters, super hero sequels and awkward teen wins the hot girl fantasies, we finally have a movie made for grown ups.” I immediately went into denial about loving many movies in all of the aforementioned categories, averted my eyes from my How to Train Your Dragon poster and determined that I too was ready for a serious and grumpy grown up “Film”.
I love to see a movie knowing as little as possible about the story beforehand. All I knew about The Town was that it involved some thieves, possibly bank robbers. I’m not positive but I think I can still remember a time in the ancient days of my youth when shootouts and car chases were somewhat exciting to me but seriously, at this point they just make me look at my watch - which, by the way, compliments of its having a white face and classic design is perfectly readable, even in a dark theater, by the light of a death star, space ship, airplane, tank, Escalade or even a wee Prius exploding.
Despite the car chase genre being probably my very least favorite I still had faith in my hunch and the high ratings I’d seen so I made the special trip into town to see the show.
Being Tuesday the regular admission price also included a free popcorn and soda. That, plus the fact that I had obviously not been the only one to catch the positive buzz about the movie, resulted in a pretty much sold out show. Even those seats on the low side of the “oh no, everybody’s watching me cross to the other side” aisle were filled with the tardy crowd even before the pre commercial commercials had ended.
The Town, as it turns out, is very much a bank robbers, shoot outs and car chases movie. A close knit group of thugs who grew up together on the wrong side of the tracks feel justified in their life of crime. But hang on, these aren’t destitute Somali pirates we’re talking about here but I guess growing up in a blue collar Boston neighborhood justifies turning to the dark side. The crew consists of a few guys, the leader/mastermind (of course deep down he’s really a good guy who all the ladies will fall for) the number two guy who’s kind of a loose canon and even meaner than the main guy (this helps make the main guy look not so bad in comparison). There’s the jovial fat dude (oh no he’s dead for sure) and then a couple of other generic red shirt ensigns who will obviously not be beaming back up to the Enterprise, if you know what I mean.
It begins with a spectacular shock and awe type heist to show us just how cool and awesome this bunch really is. Lot’s of bullets, potty mouth and of course the ever so trendy shaky cam so you can’t really tell what’s happening but you’re pretty sure it’s extra awesome.
Next, in comes the unlikely and spectacularly inconvenient love interest who starts our lovable bad guy back towards the good side of the force. The hero begins to be torn between his buddies and continued life of crime and his desire to run away with the girl to a new life and fresh beginning. Meanwhile a few more jobs are pulled off to ensure that the echoes of machine gun fire and screeching tire rubber never completely leave the theater.
As you can probably guess, talk of the inevitable and completely unavoidable one last heist appears about the time you start getting nothing but air up your drinking straw and you wonder if you’ll ever see Bubba alive on the screen again after this. So much of this film is so familiar yet it is different enough to keep you interested. The ending may be or may not be what you’d expect and I do give it credit for that particular aspect. At times it reminded me of Point Break, Good Will Hunting and even The Shawshank Redemption. The cast is great and I though it was well acted. It probably is better than most of the movies that came out this summer.
After I got home I went to The Town’s IMDb page and rated it a nice lukewarm 7 out of 10.
