The Town: A Stupid, Overrated, Crappy Movie:

I've always liked heist films too, but I've seen heist films that I liked far better than The Town.

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Thanks, Sedai. The Doug-Claire romance is also one of the major things that ruined The Town for me. Too much emphasis was placed on the romance. If Claire had been a different kind of character, and not such a fragile, wounded, vulnerable one, the romance between her and Doug might've been different, especially if considerably less time had been spent on it, and more emphasis on the heists. I also might add that the romance just didn't seem at all connected with the story; that it simply didn't belong.

It was alright IMO.

But yeah it's definitely gonna disappear fast. In fact...

What movie are we talking about?

Ben Affleck's most recent movie, The Town, won't have nearly the kind of impact on people's memories, hearts and minds as did a classic such as West Side Story. It'll be forgotten within several years. I, too, think it'll disappear pretty fast, but who knows?

Noones is saying The Town is a classic or will be memorable as A West Side Story. You're seriously thinking to much into it. It was a fun film. When compared to other blockbuster popcorn flicks I'd put The Town ahead. Of course its no Godfather either.

DrStrangelove, I wanted to really like The Town, but I couldn't. I have thought long and hard about why I didn't like it, before putting my thoughts in writing here and elsewhere, and I stand by my opinions of it. I really do think that the characters, with the exception of Jeremy Renner in his role as "Jem", were rather flimsy and underdeveloped, on the long run. Ben Affleck seemed too wooden for a tough guy like Doug, and, as for Blake Lively, I really don't know what to think, since she had such a small part in the film, there was really no chance to develop her character, either.

Rebecca Hall's Claire seemed to fragile and vulnerable and also underdeveloped as a character, but that's how it is in the book, also. The romance between Doug and Claire was rather teen-like, immature and cheesy, with no chemistry between them. It got to the point where I'd be rolling my eyes to the ceiling every time the Doug/Claire romance came on, partly because I found them both such unsympathetic, dislikable characters.

The trouble with The Town, as you accurately sum it up, is that it really is too much of a "blockbuster popcorn" flick, and I felt that I'd been cheated of a potentially really good experience at the end of the film. Part of me really doesn't like to see people who've done wrong get away with it, and the fact that Claire comes on as the combination of a Pitiful Pearl and a yuppie do-gooder is part of what I find so sickening about her.

I find her totally phony, especially because she, too, thought she could get away with what she did; abetting Doug, tipping him off at the end when Agt. Frawley and the Feds were right on the verge of catching him, and for spending all that stolen money that Doug left her before going on the lam from the law for Florida on the hockey rink.

Claire is a woman who clearly knew, at some level, that she really was playing with fire when she continued to have contact with Doug even after learning who he was and what he was up to. The fact that he insisted on buying her an expensive Tiffany diamond necklace also should've provided a clue for her, since blue-collar working men generally don't make enough to purchase that kind of thing for the women in their lives.

I also think that the Doug/Claire romance wasn't that believable, because the Town-Gown tensions here in Boston are too acute for a Townie and a Toonie to partner up.

You love West Side Story though which certainly plays up the kind of relationship you dismiss in your last paragraph above.

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That's all fine, but I'm not seeing how you get from simple character analysis (which you're doing right now) to the film being bad. Are you saying you simply don't like films where the protagonist isn't also a good guy? That's the disconnect I'm talking about.

Yes, I do love West Side Story, but the relationship between Tony and Maria didn't come about in nearly the same way as The Town's Doug and Claire's relationship did. First of all, Tony and Maria were in their teens (or possibly early 20's), while The Town's Doug and Claire were at least in their early to mid 30's, and therefore way beyond old enough to know better than to play with fire and mess around with the Feds the way they did.

Secondly, although Tony was an ex-Jet and Maria was the sister of the Shark gang leader, Bernardo, their romance came about amid conflict of two gangs of different racial/ethnic groups (i. e. the white Ethnic American Jets vs. the newly-arrived Puerto Rican Sharks), and they met at a local dance and fell in love.

Thirdly, unlike Doug MacRay and his buddies in The Town, while the Jets and Sharks in West Side Story were in conflict over the small amount of turf that was allocated to them by the system, none of the Jets or Sharks were into robbing banks and armored cars at gunpoint, taking people hostage, and putting innocent people's lives at risk just so they could steal money that they had no right to, and they were not being hunted down by the FBI. Nor did Tony rob a bank, a movie theatre, an armored truck or car, or a baseball park and leave a whole bunch of ill-gotten money for Maria so she could do whatever she wanted with it, either.

Also, unlike Riff, Bernardo, and the Jets and Sharks in West Side Story, The Town's Doug MacRay and his buddies were career criminals who were armed felons and fugitives, who were wanted by the FBI. Unlike West Side Story's Maria, The Town's Claire, who was much older than Maria, abetted an armed felon and wanted fugitive (Doug MacRay) by lying to the Feds about who he was, in order to protect him, and by tipping Doug off to the presence of Frawley and the FBI when they were right on the verge of catching him, with a "sunny days" code. I also might add that Claire was not some starry-eyed adolescent who got caught up in the excitement of a first love, and then got herself into a jam because she didn't know what she was doing. Claire was an adult, with a full time job and a decent income, who lived in an expensive condominium, in a gentrified part of Charlestown, as opposed to a real slum area, who had far more choices than "Jem's" drugged out sister, Krista, and she chose extremely poorly, imo.

Having said all of the above, The Town and West Side Story, with the exception of both of them being set in tough, mostly run-down urban areas, were about as different as night and day. There's no other way to compare them.

West Side Story went on to win ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture of the year when it came out. The Town, on the other hand, didn't win any accolades at all, which says something right there, despite people's annoyance over The Town's not having won any accolades. Granted, not every good movie wins awards and/or accolades, but The Town did not deserve any, either.

It's not just simply that Doug MacRay isn't a nice guy, Yoda. It's also because he's got a long history of exploiting people, including Krista and Claire, for his own ends, without any conscience about it, let alone a care in the world about the affects of his actions and behaviors on other people, plus he's a professional career criminal, an armed felon and a wanted fugitive.

Doug used Krista just for sex; it was not a normal, healthy romance. Neither was Doug's romance with Claire. He used Claire to get one thing he wanted out of her, and, pretty much as soon as he got what he wanted out of Claire (enough control over her so that she wouldn't turn him in and report him to the FBI), he skipped Town for Florida.

Claire, on the other hand, was so lonely and desperate for a guy that she allowed Doug to manipulate and control her, but with a more "human" face to it, if one gets the drift. One would hope that Claire later smartened up and saw Doug MacRay for what he really was (a scoundrel, and a career criminal, armed felon and wanted fugitive, who only cared about himself), and yet one would tend to doubt it, also, at this point.

I really feel like you're misunderstanding my point here. Your response seems to be "it's not that he's not a good guy, it's that he's REALLY not a good guy." He could be outright evil, but my question would be the same: why does that speak towards the quality of the film? Do you, personally, simply have an innate dislike of films whose protagonist is not a good person?

Well I disagree. I really enjoyed The Town and one of my favorites of the year.

Well, Yoda; I think that The Town was rather tinny in quality overall, and too bombastic for my tastes. The scenes in the North End and Fenway Park were grossly overdone, and the actors and actresses chosen for The Town, for the most part, were really mediocre at best, and the characters very underdeveloped, with the exception of Jeremy Renner's "Jem".

Moreover, I have an innate dislike for this film because of the message that it sends; that's it's okay to put innocent people's lives and very safety at risk in order to steal money that one has absolutely no right to, to be an accomplice to, abet a professional armed felon who's also a wanted fugitive and enable him to escape the law, and to help make total dupes of law enforcement people whose job it is to bring guys like Doug MacRay and his men to justice, and that it's also okay for some supposedly wholesome, angelic "good-girl" like Claire to receive stolen goods and to spend tons of money that's not even hers to spend on the renovation of a seedy ice-hockey rink. I don't buy it.

With The Town, one is supposed to sympathize with Doug for outwitting the FBI and getting away, and to sympathize with Claire for having fallen in love with him, allowed him to pull a fast one on her by manipulating her, and to cheer her on for tipping Doug MacRay off to the Feds with a "sunny days' code right when they were on the verge of catching Doug, having him tried and sent to prison for his crimes. Frankly, I refuse to go with that. I don't buy into a film that says we're supposed to root for a career criminal who's an armed felon and a wanted fugitive just because he's the protaganist, particularly with such a cartoon-like movie, with such "cardboard" characters. Sorry, but that's my take on it.

I wouldn't say it is as bad as stated here but I didn't like it much. The gunfights were ridiculous (these things barely happen and they don't happen that way either). Also, the girl to fall in love with a murderer and a bank robber when in fact the moment she found out who he was she'd most likely have bailed and gone to the cops immediately. But, just my opinion ... as a popcorn movie fine, as a classic film, not so much.

The protaganist being the villain in a film seems to be the trouble here - and I have no problem with that type of story. I like anti-hero stories sometimes.

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Yeah, I think that's really the whole ballgame. It took me a few tries to extract that fact, but it just comes down to whether or not you require your protagonist to be a good guy, or at least not a terrible guy. I don't think Affleck's character is quite as bad as has been suggested here, given his circumstances, but I don't find the fact that he's a bad guy to automatically disqualify the film, anyway.

For the record, I think The Town is a fine movie, if a little bit of a letdown.

There's no way that The Town will make it as a classic film. There are too many things wrong with this film to make it possible. I realize that The Town is fiction, but there's got to be some sort of believability to the story, which, with the exception of the first heist and the hostage-taking, was sorely lacking here, if one gets the drift.

It's highly unlikely that, in real life, the bank robber would've have sympathized with some woman whose bank he'd robbed, who was crying and groveling in a local laundromat over the memory. In fact, in real life, I think he would've taken furthur advantage of a weepy, vulnerable woman, not less.

I beg to differ a bit:

I think The Town could've been a fine movie, but it was a let-down for the reasons that I mentioned.

I also think that there've been films with bad-guy protagonists that've been far better-done, with far better actors, far more developed characters, and a far more mature-sounding script.

I like anti-heroes in films too, at times, but I think that The Town, with Ben Affleck's Doug MacRay, fell down badly with this one. It just didn't seem to cut the mustard, to me. I have no problem with heist movies, but I've seen heist films that're a whole lot better than The Town, and I really do have a problem with the Doug-Claire romance; it just didn't seem to belong in the story, as well as some educated woman with a decent income as a bank manager (Claire Keesey), who really should've known better, falling for some guy who lead the gang of masked, armed bankrobbers who robbed her bank and then took her hostage at gunpoint. Something jars and doesn't fit, imo.

That's all well and good, but many, many times when asked to elaborate on why you didn't like something, you simply listed reasons the protagonist was a bad guy. I see no reason to do this if it isn't a disqualifying (or nearly disqualifying) factor in deciding what you think of a film.