The Town

“The Town,” Ben Affleck’s latest directorial endeavor, shows a kind of craftsmanship that’s been hiding in Affleck behind the likes of “Paycheck.” In “The Town,” Affleck succeeds both as an actor and a director. Part of you is a little peeved that he didn’t have the decency to expose his excellence in recent years. The other part is too entertained to care.

The movie, set in Charlestown, centers on Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), the kind of upstanding criminal that movie audiences love. MacRay and his cronies, which include Jeremy Renner as James, MacRay’s trigger-happy best friend, rob banks and the first robbery we witness culminates in their kidnapping of the bank manager, Claire (Rebecca Hall). She is later set free and for a time, the men concern themselves with their cash. However, MacRay finds himself falling for the quietly beautiful and damaged Claire. Of course, she doesn’t know he’s the one of the men who kidnapped her.

On the other side of things is Jon Hamm as Special Agent Adam Frawley, an FBI agent who’s made it his mission to put our antiheroes behind bars.

Affleck and Hall are both appealing and there’s a subtle honesty in their courtship that makes the love story at the heart of “The Town” affecting. You know where they’re headed but that doesn’t make the journey any less engaging.

Renner is quickly proving to be an actor to keep your eye on. The possibility for overstatement in his performance is huge, but Renner hints at just enough vulnerability to let you know that James is human. Hamm, on the other hand, is given a thankless part. Morality has never looked or sounded this repugnant.

The script, co-written by Affleck as well, is tense and smart, deftly mixing action and romance in a way that is unexpectedly refreshing. The action scenes are well filmed, raising your pulse without compromising the movie’s grittiness to become something out of a John Woo film. There’s hard-earned suspense in the proceedings and even with a lack of gunplay, Affleck mines some wonderful anxiety in his scenarios.

One scene, in which the fighting Irish tattoo on the back of James’s neck proves to be an almost dangerous tell-all, is unbearably suspenseful. Affleck doesn’t monitor the scene for a time and his lack of control gives the scene a terrifying sense of possibility.

If I haven’t heaped enough praise on Affleck yet, allow me to commend his directorial skills as well. He lends the film a needed sense of plausibility and he gets close to his actors, wanting us to care about them. The only time his vision gets away from him is toward the end, when the movie gets a little sappy. But the film’s too quick and lean to let you dwell on its shortcomings. Of which there are few.