Ben Affleck the actor didn't deserve to get flushed down the toilet for his spell of atrocities in 2001-3, as heinous as
Pearl Harbor or
Gigli doubtless were, but it was a close call. Affleck the director is treading a safer if duller path as Ed Burns's more photogenic stand-in, able to call on a bigger budget but smoothing off too many rough edges to have much interest.
The Town is an archetypal Burns set-up, with Affleck leading a set of Oirish ghetto bank robbers through a run of heists while struggling with the usual 'good guy trapped inside the bad guy but trying to go clean' scenario.
It's well assembled, to be fair, taut and decently cast, and moves from stock scene to stock scene with some economy, so that the souring of his love interest relationship upon discovery of his true nature or the showdown with his bullying overlords aren't painfully drawn out, as if Affleck was apologetic at the formulaic structure of it all and just wanted to get through in one piece, much like his character. But why go through it at all?
5/10
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