The Town

Impressions before seeing it
I was only interested because Ben Affleck directed it. Say what you want about his acting, but the dude knows how to make a movie.

How was it?
Sometimes I get a little sick of the heist movies because there's a lot of them, and you can only watch people steal large quantities of cash or valuables so many times before it gets old. But in this case, The Town feels like The Departed but with bank robbers instead of gangs. Definitely not a bad thing at all.

I actually became engrossed in it due to the lack of heists. There a few bank robbery scenes, yes, but the opening one is probably the most impacting, and needs to be because it traumatizes the bank teller (Rebecca Hall) for the rest of the movie. Then we get a lot of scenes laced with tension as one of the robbers (Ben Affleck) falls in love with her, the most violent of their crew (Jeremy Renner) is in danger of being identified by her, an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) is on their trail, and Affleck just wants to get out of there. That last one did make me laugh a little because heist movies always seem to have that "one last job and them I'm out!" component, but it worked in a way that didn't feel cliched. My one complaint is that Hall should've been more suspicious of Affleck, because he was making it obvious by immediately asking "Did they say who did it?" and other questions every time she mentioned a crime that he committed. Or maybe that's just because I was on the outside looking in and already knew he was guilty.

Recommendation
It's really solid and entertaining, with enough action and drama to please everyone. Again, I'd probably recommend it to fans of The Departed or Gone Baby Gone.