Four friends Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck),James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner),Albert Magloan (Slaine) and Desmond Elden (Owen Burke) are robbers working the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. In their latest job, they take the bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage and then let her go. Doug fake dates Claire to make sure she can't ID them. He's also having sex with James' drugged out sister Krista Coughlin (Blake Lively). Meanwhile they are being investigated by the FBI led by Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm).

This is a richly character driven crime thriller. Ben Affleck knows these characters well. And acting with the intense Jeremy Renner makes Affleck better. The only actor who looks out of place is Blake Lively. She just can't get rid of that Cali feel and her accent sounds terrible. Brit Rebecca Hall does a better job than her. The action is exciting. And the story is riveting. But it's the characters and the actors that are so engaging.

I'd heard plenty about THE TOWN, a film which lifted Ben Affleck from the doldrums and gave him a revamped career of sorts by revealing him to be an efficient director of modern-day thrillers. One reviewer on here even likens him to Scorsese. So what of this Oscar-nominated film, and will it really stand up to scrutiny? The answer is no, not really. THE TOWN turns out to be a very familiar and ordinary type of thriller that comes across as a Boston-set rip-off of Michael Mann's HEAT. Once again we follow the predictable story of a gang of bank robbers, with the running time split between their lives and loves and the actual heist scenes.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike this film. I particularly enjoyed Affleck's direction in the action scenes, which are vibrant, gritty, and exciting (even if the whole clichéd blue tint look of the cinematography spoils things a bit). There's a top-notch car chase and some quite wonderfully hard-hitting scenes at the (again, predictable) climax. It's the stuff in between the action where this film falls down.

To put it bluntly, THE TOWN is overlong and features characters who aren't particularly interesting. The likes of Affleck and Jeremy Renner are defined by their actions, so watching them sitting around chatting is pretty dull. The romantic scenes are even worse, even if Rebecca Hall does a good job. And the whole sub-plot with Jon Hamm's FBI guy is unnecessary, feeling tacked on and dragging the pace down still further. THE TOWN is a fun thriller, but nothing special.

In The Town Ben Affleck got to do another big screen tribute to his home town of Boston and even better got to shoot a good deal of this film at his beloved Fenway Park. Directing, writing, and starring in The Town who could ask for more except to shoot the film in places that I'm sure meant a good deal to him personally.

But The Town isn't some hazy nostalgic type movie, not by any means. It's a hard hitting crime drama about the lives of a heist crew and what it took for the FBI to bring them down.

The Town is brutally realistic in its depiction of these robbers who grew up in the tough neighborhood of Charlestown where people enter the trade of thievery from generation to generation. Ben Affleck is such a person whose father Chris Cooper is currently doing a life sentence for a robbery that was planned by neighborhood crime boss Pete Postlethewaite from his florist shop. Pete's character must have been steeped in crime lore and took as his model that other noted florist of Irish descent who also ran a crime organization, Dion O'Bannion.

At their latest robbery where the crew is completely masked, a hostage they took and released after safely getting away was seen talking to the FBI in the person of agent Jon Hamm who has made it his life's crusade to take this bunch down. They took her driver's license and note that Rebecca Hall is from The Town. Just to make sure she isn't telling anything that could lead to their arrest, Affleck arranges an accidental meeting with Hall. Even though he's already involved with Blake Lively sister of friend Jeremy Renner and fellow crew member, Affleck and Hall start getting involved to the surprise of Affleck.

The Town as elements of classic films like White Heat and The Asphalt Jungle and what I like about it is like The Asphalt Jungle, director Affleck got some well rounded, three dimensional portraits of his characters without sacrificing either suspense or action. Jeremy Renner who is up for Best Supporting Actor is great as the best friend and fellow crew member who is determined not to go back to prison for life as he's already a two time loser. Postlethwaite is as lethal as Dion O'Bannion was and in his own scene with Affleck visiting him in prison Chris Cooper is unforgettable. Cooper is one of the best actors we have currently, I've never seen him bad in anything he does and The Town is no exception.

The climax involved the gang pulling a heist on that noted Boston shrine Fenway Park. That's almost sacrilege in Boston, but this is one nervy crew of professionals. And the FBI is not stupid either. The climax should satisfy any action fan.

I really recommend seeing The Town which is a film that succeeds on numerous levels and can be enjoyed by all kinds of film fans with all kinds of taste.