Review of The Town (2010) by Shiira — 23 Sep 2010

With two movies under this surprising filmmaker's belt, one commonality stands out; aside from, do we dare say, the auteur's fondness for time-lapse photography(he likes fast clouds), and that is his tendency to uphold the sanctity of motherhood, at the expense of the best interest for the child.

Patrick Kenzie, the low-rent gumshoe played by Casey Affleck in "Gone Baby Gone", not only sees law and order in terms of black and white, his monochromatic worldview extends to people as well, best exemplified in the penultimate scene where he "[does] the right thing" and calls the cops on Jack Doyle(Morgan Freeman), who helped orchestrate the kidnapping of a little girl.

Despite his girlfriend's protestations, Patrick insists on reuniting the child with her druggin' and whorin' mother(played by Amy Ryan). How can the detective be this unbending and injudicious, so unseeing of the big picture at hand? How can the protagonist, the hero we're supposed to relate with, let us down so badly? It's blood simple.

Provincialism is the cause root of Patrick's blindness; he never left Dorchester, and as a result, the Massachusetts native never attained the proper perspective of its denizens, especially Helene, because he's one of them, a lower-class Bostonian with the same issues about race and social class, the same type blood.

Twice, on separate occasions, Helene utters the n-word in Patrick's company without a reprimand, without even flinching. His complacency toward the racial epithet materializes as a real blind spot when it's revealed that the black chief of police keeps a white wife.

As a counter to Angela's advisory against pursuing the letter of the law, the primordial Patrick, the hard-scrabbled street kid whom the soft girl tamed in high school, returns with a vengeance, when he asks with some bitterness and wounded pride, "Why? Because he has money and makes her sandwiches?" Is Patrick lashing out at Doyle's class, or race? The moviegoer gets the answer in the closing moments of "Gone Baby Gone", as the detective sits with the returned girl on the parlour sofa.

Only then, after it's too late, over the blare of a cartoon from the electronic babysitter, does the detective practice introspection. Whereas Patrick Kenzie never left Boston, Doug McCrae(Ben Affleck) returns to Charlestown after his professional hockey career goes nowhere.

According to Jem(Jeremy Renner), his almost famous friend thinks he's better than the other neighborhood boys-turned-hardened criminals(an accusation that's right on the money), unlike Patrick, who doesn't give up on Helene's potentiality as a mother, which in effect, validates his own self-worth as a bred-and-born townie.

While Patrick, arguably, is a closeted bigot, Doug's brand of intolerance seems more rooted in class. Rather than improve the life of the child he fathered with Jem's sister(played by Blake Lively), the disposable girlfriend, the barfly he f****, Doug leaves behind the stolen loot with Claire(Rebecca Hall), the woman he makes loves to, his ticket out of Charlestown(as Angela was Patrick's ticket to liberate himself from the sociological limitations of his own town); he leaves behind a little girl in hell, likewise, with an equally unfit mother.