Character development is usually overlooked in action/thriller movies. Usually we have rather flat characters who came to an epiphanic moment around the end of the movie. Here the characters have traits that are understandable based on their history and their environment. I really found this aspect of the movie refreshing.

The story is about a town called Charlestown which is famous for being the birthplace of the largest number of robbers in the entire USA. This place spawns criminals like crazy. Ben Affleck is one of them, although he is the gentleman gangster, never killed someone, only has robbed some banks. The latest heist goes awry however and a guard is shot down. The police goes beserk and does everything in its power to apprehend the criminals at large. Will Ben Affleck succeed in pulling off the biggest heist without getting busted?Movies got to be sold to the masses and I cant think of another reason that in most heist movies there always has to be a romantic story in order to lure the female audiences into buying a ticket. Can't image any guy wanting to see a romance in a tough heist movie. I dont have anything against romances, not even in heist movies, as long as the romantic story is credible. And it was NOT.The somewhat flawed romantic story is about Ben Affleck, playing a bankrobber, who starts flirting with a female bankmanager of the place that he just robbed. That's just a lot of Hollywood romantic crap. The writer only puts something THIS much unbelievable in the story to sell tickets for females, who wanna drool over Ben Affleck. Females wont mind, guys probably will get anoyed by it somewhat.The rest of this movie is good though. Very good. The heist part of this movie is really tough and suspenseful. Coming close in true to life portrayal of gangster life in classics like "Heat" with Robert de Niro and Al Pacino and "Training Day", with Denzel Washington. These realistic supsenseful heist action scenes are what make this movie standout above the average heist movie. Acting in it is very very good. From leading characters (Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner) to some of the supporting actors, acting is on a level that really made me believe in the gangsters world that was portrayed in "The Town".Sum total of this movie is pretty impressive, despite some flaws in the romantic story. If you just wanna see an entertaining action movie, then this hollywood formula film will certainly entertain. And there are some nice twists near the end that make this story surprising and very suspenseful. Too bad about the flawed romantic story, because the rest of this heist movie is really great.

This movie is so painfully middle of the road it's frustrating. There is absolutely nothing unique or original about this movie. You certainly cannot call it bad by any stretch but my word, what a meandering, predictable, and hollow movie.

'The Town (2010)' is a thriller centred around a gang of bank robbers residing in the supposed 'breeding ground for armed robbers', Charlestown in Boston, Massachusetts. As is usual for most of Affleck's fare, and for most of the features set in that particular city, there is a distinct air of 'localism', highlighting a close-knit community with almost patriotic levels of commitment to one another. This sense of pride for a place is pushed hard, with the ground-level - and usually criminal - elements elevated to a pedestal even above the country - and, certainly, law of the land - in which they reside, almost like those jingoistic military flicks if they were to replace their flag with a back-yard barbecue. It is a strange choice, to put so much emphasis on the setting of the piece when it isn't even all that relevant to the story. Stranger still, is to feature TV-style sweeping shots of the skyline. Still, the handling of the environment is practically a trope for features set in the director's home-town at this point, so it's understandable why the choice was made. Demonising, or pseudo doing such, the FBI does feel like a missed opportunity, though. It feels generic at this point to make the 'good guys' bad by having them be general jerks, if they can't be outright corrupt (though it starts heading that way at one point), and makes for a less interesting feature. If the FBI guys were more nuanced, the flick could've played as a nice two-hander, a cat-and-mouse with conflicting sympathies on the part of the audience. As is, the audience is only meant to root for Affleck and company, whom are all 'bad guys' and don't do much to change our perception from that. Personally, I did empathise with the protagonist, but the other members of the crew aren't fleshed out enough to care for and some of their actions aren't ones you'd want to see go unpunished. In this way, we don't always root for our 'heroes' to get away with it, which means that the switching of the 'good and bad' has kind of failed. Arguably, this would make a more nuanced piece but nuance isn't being aimed for in this aspect. The feature is fairly slow, too. Its central romance feels doomed to fail, fleshed out only so that it can fall apart, and isn't gripping enough to be a main focus. It also isn't given all that much attention despite its time on-screen. The handling of character development is nice in some select scenes, but much of the 'masculinity gone awry' has been done better before. The action set-pieces are all fantastic, though. The finale, especially, is a taut and tense affair with frenetic violence escalating from some fairly suspenseful moments. It leaves you on a relatively high-note, despite a slow and stop-start ending - that's also very clichéd, and does make up for some of the less interesting segments. Still, the lasting impact of the piece is a quite weak and forgettable one. 6/10