The Town Information

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The Town is a 2010 American crime drama film starring, co-written, and directed by Ben Affleck adapted from Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves. The film opened in theaters in the United States on September 17, 2010, at number one with more than $23 million and positive reviews. Jeremy Renner was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as James "Jem" Coughlin.

The film is one of a number set in Boston, Massachusetts, over the past decade that have formed a "sub-genre" of crime films, including Affleck's own 2007 film Gone Baby Gone.

Plot

Four lifelong friends from Charlestown, Boston - Douglas "Doug" MacRay, James "Jem" Coughlin, Albert "Gloansy" Magloan, and Desmond "Dez" Elden - rob a bank. They take the manager, Claire Keesey, hostage but release her without harm. Doug follows Claire to prevent Jem from eliminating her as a witness, and a romance grows between them, which he hides from the gang. As they grow closer, Doug tells Claire of his search for his long-lost mother, who he thinks went to live with his aunt in Tangerine, Florida. He also blew a chance to be a professional hockey player for a life of crime. She tells Doug that she saw a tattoo on one of the robbers, and he realizes that she can identify Jem and send them all to jail. He knows that Jem will kill her if he realizes the truth, and he persuades her that the authorities cannot protect her either, so she decides not to tell the police, but Doug is increasingly disenchanted with his criminal lifestyle. When Claire tells Doug that her car had been stolen, Doug and Jem seek out the perpetrators and attack them, shooting one in the leg.

FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley performs surveillance on the gang and recognizes their ties to local crime lord Fergus "Fergie" Colm, who has another robbery planned for them. During a visit to his father Stephen in prison, Doug reveals his plans to leave Charlestown and go to Florida. Stephen ends the visit by telling his son, "I'll see you again, this side or the other." The gang's next robbery in the North End goes awry, and the gang barely escapes. Adam interrogates the gang but fails to get any confessions and is forced to release them. Doug asks Claire if she will go away with him, and she agrees. Adam, who had been wiretapping Claire's phone after she quit her job, threatens to prosecute her as an accomplice after learning that she is seeing Doug. Shocked to discover that her lover was one of her assailants, she decides to help Adam.

Meanwhile, Fergie and Jem are pressuring Doug about the next job, but Doug is determined to get out. Fergie threatens to kill Claire if Doug doesn't go through with the job and reveals to Doug how he controlled his father by making his mother an addict, which led to her suicide. Doug gives in but swears that he will kill Fergie if anything happens to Claire.

At Fenway Park, Doug and Jem enter disguised as Boston police officers, nab $3,500,000 in cash, and prepare to escape in an ambulance disguised as paramedics. But Doug's ex-girlfriend, Krista, threatened by Frawley, reveals enough for the FBI to surround Fenway before the gang gets out. The gang is caught in a firefight with FBI SWAT, and Dez and Gloansy are killed, but Doug and Jem slip out in their police uniforms. Frawley spots Jem and they exchange gunfire. Jem, determined not to go back to prison, rushes the police and is killed. Doug sees it all but knows he cannot save Jem and walks away.

Knowing that Claire is in danger and that he will never escape as long as Fergie is alive, Doug murders Fergie and his bodyguard and calls Claire to ask her to come away with him to Florida. Watching from across the street, Doug sees that the FBI is there as Claire tells him to come over, but, eventually, she gives him a cue to warn him away. Doug flees, donning an MBTA uniform and escaping in a stolen bus. Later, Claire finds a bag buried in her community garden containing the stolen money, a tangerine, and a note from Doug, suggesting that she can make better use of the money than he can, ending with, "I'll see you again, this side or the other." Claire donates the money, in memory of Doug's mother, to refurbish the local ice hockey arena in which Doug once played. And from the deck of a small house, Doug looks out over the water, alone, seemingly safe in Florida.

Cast

• Ben Affleck - Douglas "Doug" MacRay
• Jon Hamm - FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley
• Rebecca Hall - Claire Keesey
• Jeremy Renner - James "Jem" Coughlin
• Blake Lively - Krista Coughlin
• Chris Cooper - Stephen MacRay
• Slaine - Albert "Gloansy" Magloan
• Titus Welliver - Boston Police Department Officer Dino Ciampa
• Pete Postlethwaite - Fergus "Fergie" Colm
• Owen Burke - Desmond "Dez" Elden

Production

Pre-production

In 2006, director Adrian Lyne brought Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves to producer Graham King. King in turn showed it to studio Warner Bros., who agreed to make an adaptation direct by Lyne and written by Sheldon Turner. Given screenwriting attempts by Turner, Hogan himself and screenwriter Peter Craig did not manage build a script that fit Warner's requirement for a standard two-hour length movie with a $37 million budget, by 2008 Ben Affleck, fresh off his directorial debut in Gone Baby Gone, was brought into the project, now called The Town, serving as star, director and co-writer. Affleck wanted to direct a movie "I personally researched and understood", inviting high school classmate Aaron Stockard to work with him on the script, and travelling to Boston to research on the subject. While Affleck had grown up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he barely heard of Charlestown before joining the project. Affleck and Stockard made many interviews with the Charlestown community, as well as the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force in Boston. Later the film's actors also researched within the community to make for more believable characters and performances. Charlestown locals also joined the cast, mostly as extras.

Filming

The production began filming late August 2009 in Boston. The former MASSBank branch located in Melrose, Massachusetts, was used as the location for the first robbery of the film, taking on the name Cambridge Merchants Bank (the exterior shots, however, are of Cambridge Savings Bank in Harvard Square). Filming also took place at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut, for casino scenes, Massachusetts Correctional Institution " Cedar Junction in Walpole, Massachusetts, for use of their visiting room, and at Anderson Regional Transportation Center in Woburn, Massachusetts, for the ending Amtrak scenes.

Release

The Town was shown at the Venice Film Festival and premiered at Boston's Fenway Park. The film was released in the United States on September 17, 2010.

Box office

The film took first place at the box office during its opening weekend, taking in $23.8 million. The Town grossed $92.1 million in the United States and Canada with an additional $61.8 million in other territories for a total of $154 million worldwide on a production budget of $37 million.

Home media

The film was released on Blu-ray disc and DVD on . Both versions include special features and commentary including a look at Affleck as a director and actor. The extended/unrated version is a Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy bundle which includes 28 minutes of additional footage, taking the runtime to over 153 minutes.

On , the three-disc The Town: Ultimate Collectors Edition DVD/Blu-ray set was released. This set includes the previously released theatrical and extended cut Blu-ray disc as well as a second Blu-ray disc and a DVD which feature a new extended cut with an alternate, darker ending. In the alternate ending, Affleck's character is killed by the car thief he had shot in the leg earlier in the movie.

2012 re-release

On February 5, 2012, to promote the upcoming The Town: Ultimate Collectors Edition DVD/Blu-ray set, the AMC Loews Boston Common movie theater hosted an "exclusive engagement" of The Town (Take 2), wherein three showings of the film were shown with the alternate ending featured in the new home media release. Immediately preceding each screening, a vice president from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment thanked all those in attendance, including Titus Welliver (Dino Ciampa), Dennis McLaughlin (Rusty), and Ben Affleck's mother, for coming out and supporting director Ben Affleck's "preferred" version of the film, leading to a short, prerecorded introduction by Affleck himself. Earlier that day, the intersection of Tremont and Avery streets was temporarily renamed "The Town Take 2 Place" in a small ceremony, attended by Welliver and Boston city officials.

Reception

Critical response

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of 208 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.7 out of 10. The site describes the film as "tense, smartly written, and wonderfully cast". Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 74 based on 42 reviews.

Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, praising Jeremy Renner's performance and Affleck's direction. Several reviewers praised the film's action sequences. In his review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott commented on the opening heist, "That sequence, like most of the other action set pieces in the film, is lean, brutal and efficient, and evidence of Mr. Affleck's skill and self-confidence as a director." Xan Brooks, in The Guardian, wrote that the action sequences were "sharply orchestrated" but added "it's a bogus, bull-headed enterprise all the same; a film that leaves no cliche untrampled." Justin Chang wrote in Variety that the action scenes strike "an ideal balance between kineticism and clarity" aided by cinematographer Robert Elswit and film editor Dylan Tichenor. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film an A+, noting that he found the film incredibly similar to Michael Mann's Heat, which he described as "one of [his] favorite movies of all time." The reviewers at Spill.com also praised one of the shootout scenes, saying "It is surely the best shootout scene we have seen in decades." Writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Laremy Lengel titled his review "The Town Works Best if You Avoid the Heat," also referencing Mann's film.

As a Boston-based crime drama, the film forms part of a "crime-movie subgenre" typically marked by "flavorsome accents, pungent atmosphere and fatalistic undertow," according to Chang. Within that subgenre, which includes The Boondock Saints, The Departed, Mystic River and Affleck's Gone Baby Gone, The Town is more of a straightforward crime-procedural and has a more optimistic outlook.

Accolades

Award	Category	Subject	Result
Broadcast Film Critics Association Award	Best Film
	Best Supporting Actor	Jeremy Renner
	Best Cast
	Best Screenplay	Ben Affleck, Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard
	Best Action Film
National Board of Review of Motion Pictures	Best Acting by an Ensemble Cast
Academy Award	Best Supporting Actor	Jeremy Renner
Golden Globe Award	Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture
Screen Actors Guild Award	Best Supporting Actor
Satellite Award	Best Supporting Actor
	Best Adapted Screenplay	Peter Craig
		Aaron Stockard
		Ben Affleck
	Best Director
	Best Editing	Dylan Tichenor
BAFTA Award	Best Supporting Actor	Pete Postlethwaite (posthumous)

Charlestown, bank robbery, and crime

A voice in the trailer of the film says: "There are over 300 bank robberies in Boston every year. Most of these professionals live in a 1-square-mile neighborhood called Charlestown." In fact, there were 23 reported bank robberies in the entire state of Massachusetts in the first quarter of 2010, compared with 49 in Illinois and 136 in California, according to the FBI.

The film itself, however, only states that "One blue-collar Boston neighborhood has produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere in the world." It then quotes an unnamed Boston Robbery Task Force Federal Agent as saying, "Bank robbery became like a trade in Charlestown, passed down from father to son." During the film, Agent Frawley tells Claire something along these lines, and says that when the BPD gets a call about an armored car robbery it has become standard procedure to close the Charlestown Bridge.

The film also ends with a written disclaimer: "Charlestown's reputation as a breeding ground for armed robbers is authentic. However, this film all but ignores the great majority of the residents of Charlestown, past and present, who are the same good and true people found most anywhere," to whom the film is dedicated.

According to a September 2010 article in The Boston Globe, Charlestown was once known as an area where bank robbers were concentrated, but has not been since the mid-1990s, and the subject has been a sore point for "Townies". Now much of the neighborhood has been gentrified. There is some sense of rivalry between Townies, people who lived in the historically Irish-Catholic neighborhood for decades, and "Tunies", largely white-collar workers who arrived with gentrification, but most of that has died down, the newspaper reports. The film makes reference to the definition of "Tunies" during one of Doug and Claire's dates.

In the early 1990s, an increase in the number of bank and armored car robberies by Townies focused attention on Charlestown. In one heist in Hudson, New Hampshire, two guards were killed, and is alluded to in the film - during a scene where Agent Frawley is briefing his task force, he mentions that Doug's father is serving life for a notorious robbery in Nashua. According to Frawley, the elder Macray hijacked a "bread truck" (armored car) up to New Hampshire, and when one of the guards saw his face, he executed both of them with their own weapons. Frawley notes that this incident led to the passing of regulations prohibiting the driver from leaving the cab even if their partner was being held at gunpoint. Charles Hogan got the idea for his novel, on which the film is based, in 1995. "It was just so remarkable that this one very small community was the focus for bank robbers," he said, but he was very aware that crime was only one part of the community, and he did not want to make all residents of the neighborhood look like criminals. At the film's premiere, Affleck made a similar statement: "Charlestown isn't full of bank robbers and Dorchester isn't full of bad guys and Southie isn't full of math geniuses or bad people."

Jack O'Callahan, a Charlestown native born in 1957, said there was an element of crime in Charlestown when he grew up there, "But it didn't bleed into the neighborhood. And those guys were pretty good parents who went to church on Sundays. They were gangsters, but they were good neighbors."