Review of The Town (2010) by Xgary X — 07 Oct 2013

A crew of professional thieves are threatened by the FBI agent pursuing them when he realises that the gang's mastermind has engaged in a relationship with a potential witness. I was extremely impressed with Ben Affleck's directorial debut Gone Baby Gone and was looking forward to this one immensely.

This may have coloured my viewpoint slightly, but I found it a little bit of a let down. It's not that it's in any way bad; on the contrary, it's an extremely well engineered heist movie with a full compliment of solid performances, well written characters and dialogue.

It's just missing that spark of originality and inspiration that made his previous film something special. It clearly takes a lot of cues from Heat, but the rather generic plot means it is a rather less layered and complex affair.

It's still easily one of the best examples of the genre since Mann's film was released and is well worth seeing; I was just hoping for a little more. No pleasing some people...