Movie of the Week: The Town: Extended Cut

  

 

    Movie of the Week (6/2/13-6/8/13): "Welcome to the bank robbery capital of America" is the tag line for a great heist movie from filmmaker Ben Affleck. I did not know that a suburb of Boston, Charlestown, was the bank robbery capital of America until I saw this movie. The suburb is home to thousands of criminals who rob banks, some of which never get caught. The Town: Extended Cut focuses on a bank robber, Doug MacRay, some of his friends, a girl which he met during a robbery, and a FBI agent trying to catch the bank robbers. It all combines well to give us a good suspenseful crime drama.
    The film opens with a robbery, which is a good way to get the audience attention because the robbers incorporate good strategy in getting away with it. The rest of the film contains a lot of very good character development and back stories and two more robberies. Ben Affleck stars in this film and also directs, in which he did a great job. This is a very good crime drama, it is not just an all out action movie, in fact it takes a lot of elements from the classic heist film Heat. Affleck takes us into the minds of the robbers, which we then begin to like and root for, sometimes. He and his writers spread out the drama and action very well so that it does not get boring nor is there too much shooting.
    When this was released into theaters it was released as the theatrical cut, naturally, but my movie of the week is not that version. No, it is the much better Extended Cut. This version is much better, it contains extended scenes, deleted scenes that add much more to the plot and characters in terms of dialogue and more story. This version cracks in at 150 minutes while the theatrical version is 125 minutes, but it is the better version if you want the whole experience. Of course, in order to have a good long crime drama, with all the extended scenes in this version, you have to have the right actors. And The Town has that across the board.
    We first have Ben Affleck, delivering a great performance as Doug MacRay who is the head bank robber and who develops a relationship with Claire Keesey, played by Rebecca Hall. He meets her in the first bank robbery and begins falling for her. We have Jeremy Renner as James Coughlin, who is MacRay's right hand man and the "tough guy" of the bunch. Renner delivers a wonderful Oscar nominated performance here. We also have Blake Lively as Krista Coughlin, James' brother, who plays MacRay's earlier lover, she becomes a big detail in the plot as the movie goes on, Lively also did a wonderful job here. There is also Jon Hamm as the FBI agent, Adam Frawley, trying to catch MacRay and his crew. Finally, we have Chris Cooper as Stephen MacRay, Doug's father, who only has about five to ten minutes of screen time, but that short time it very good. That particular scene is my favorite in the movie because of the dialogue, long camera shots, acting, and interesting backstory that we get. It is a very good scene, it really grabs you!      
    The last thirty minutes of the film are very intense because it is the last job, which takes place at Fenway Park, so we get a very good climax out of it. Another aspect that I enjoyed about this movie was the score, it fits great with the more dramatic scenes and it is just a simple piano rhythm, but it is fantastic and moving. This might not be the best heist movie of all time, but it is the best one in the last fifth teen years because they are so hard to make and get right. Now, it wasn't a perfect movie, but it was very close. What made it so good was the amount of drama that they gave us mixed in with some very well done shootouts and a car chase through tight city blocks. If you haven't seen this, watch it and watch the Extended Cut, it is the version that Ben Affleck wanted and if it had been released it might have gotten more than one Oscar nomination. A very good, well acted, well directed heist drama that will be hard to top by Hollywood in the next few years.                             
3.5/4 Stars