We Are Going to The Town

Watching The Town, I was concerned at the start when my main focus was on which Boston sports team would be on Ben's next track jacket (the Pats must be upset that none of their gear was ever on display). And it takes an hour to shake the Don Draper off of Jon Hamm's FBI agent (it finally happens when he wears a particularly unfortunate flannel shirt).

But enough about the clothes--this is a thriller about bank robbers, after all! As the pre-credit titles inform us, The Town is Charlestown, where there's more men working with submachine guns and Skeletor masks than anywhere else in the world. In case we might forget where we are, a hundred or so helicopter establishing shots of the Bunker Hill Monument help us remember.

Director Ben Affleck chose Ben Affleck to star as Doug, a gifted bank robber who's (spoiler alert!) also a pretty swell guy. His partner is Jim (Jeremy Renner, very at home and more comfortably trashy than Affleck), his ex is Jim's sister Krista (Blake very Lively) and his boring new girlfriend is Claire (Rebecca Hall), an employee of a bank he robbed.

The big problem: the movie should have been about Jim, not Doug. Look at either Scarface. Paul Muni and Al Pacino weren't the nice guys, they were the guys with sadistic spark that Jeremy Renner gets to display all too infrequently in The Town. The best scene is probably the one where Jim and Doug beat on some townies. Doug keeps his hockey mask on during the assault to avoid reprisal but Jim tears his off so the victim knows who to fear. A hint for Affleck going forward: we're more interested in the scary guy than the scared guy.

I'm sure the screenplay was how it was in the source novel and blah blah but as a director you have to see the actor who brings the heat and go with him. This is maybe harder to do if you're the director and star with less heat.

At least he looked sexy as hell. I find the older Ben, with a lined forehead, grey hairs and ripped body to be much more attractive than baby Ben. While Doug struggles to stay awake while talking to Claire as she plants flowers for poor children to trample, he has better chemistry with the slatternly, unapologetic Krista. For important historical background on this matter, see Vulture's 59-page slideshow "Blake Lively's Breast Looks" (hey--I just report the news!). I much preferred Affleck's "I'm trying to be a classy guy but I'm really not" vibe to his "I'm trying to be a classy guy" vibe with Rebecca Hall. Who was just boring.

Despite all demurrals, I'd recommend the film. It's well-cast (with fine additional work by Chris Cooper and Pete Postlethwaite in what I understand to be flawless Northern Irish accent). It has my best ever chase scene starring a minivan. And it steals the ending of The Shawshank Redemption so neatly that I had to tip my hat. If only Ben's bearded Florida revelry were interrupted by Blake Lively approaching on a canoe, asking where she could score some Oxy...

Joaq

After Casey Affleck revealed that I'm Still Here was a hoax, I could go see it. I can't take any more of this Exit Through the Gift Shop, Catfish, etc."is it real or not?" nonsense.


My favorite indication of Joaquin Phoenix's false hip-hop persona (besides the fact that the film has fucking writing credits (pull your head out of your ass Roger Ebert)) was his rap name itself: JP. Every time I heard "JP" I didn't know to whom we were referring, as the man's name starts with W and F sounds.

My main takeaway from the film is that Hollywood fame is hellish. There's so much empty waiting around time, arranging meetings that won't be kept, finding cars and drivers and planes to nowhere, nibbling unsatisfactory room service, listening to the dull squawk of "entertainment news," saying "what's up?" to dozens of strangers and letting your assistants run your life so that you can emerge from these uncanny spaces and be erased in a storm of camera flashes.

In general it might make you so depressed that you start to look like Vincent Gallo with a more uneven part in the mustache of your beard.

I'm Still Here is only interesting in the parts where pieces of Phoenix's acting life come through. He has a nice beef about the Academy stupidly praising Revolutionary Road over Reservation Road and it's interesting to learn that he doesn't watch the movies in which he acts...maybe, if you can take him at his word. Stupid mockumentaries.

All of this leads to the question: have you seen Joaquin's theoretical swansong, James Gray's Two Lovers, even if he hasn't? His performance, as the all-time most irresistible 30-something man who lives with his parents, is immense, one of the finest I've seen in the last decade. Leonard Kraditor's combination of conviviality, moroseness, intelligence and naivety isn't quite like any other character I can recall. Phoenix, totally locked in, makes his every move worth close inspection.


He so outshines Gwyneth Paltrow (resembling a forlorn corn husk as the supposedly passionate Michelle) that I felt bad for her. She should have been driven to retirement, though I'd be remiss not to mention her flashing a single boob for Leonard, which was world class. Michelle is better paired with her married lawyer boyfriend, played by a bespectacled Elias Koteas with his usual aplomb.


Vinessa Shaw fares somewhat better as Sandra, Leonard's conventional choice for a mate (they usually speak on a land line while Michelle talks to Leonard on a cell phone, in a not terribly subtle move by Mr. Gray). The parental-approved couple share a fabulous scene at a ice blue boardwalk restaurant where she observes that Phoenix is frozen in place and gifts him a pair of gloves. The gesture is warm but the situation isn't. Napkins arranged in the water glasses around the couple are like stilled fountains.


Isabella Rossellini, playing Leonard's mother, is the only figure intuitive enough to see Leonard's next moves. She's there in the end (at a chilly New Year's party) to observe her son throw it all away in the name of love and then take it all back. Phoenix acts the climax with few words but we see perfectly Leonard's blend of total calculation and terror. His behavior is cruel enough to poison one's idea of love--what a feat!

A Splendid Interpretation of a WTT Favorite