Not to be confused with the play (“Our Town”) I wrote about yesterday, “The Town” is the 2010 Ben Affleck film about a gang of bank robbers from Charlestown. I ordered it from Netflix, mostly to try to discover why “The Fighter” was winning so many awards while “The Town” was being ignored. About one-third of the way through I had my answer: “The Town” wasn’t all that good. It did get better towards the end. Hundreds of bullets flying and many things blowing up will do that to a movie. Because it was filmed on location, you get to see high speed car chases through the narrow streets of Boston which was pretty unique and the local accents weren’t too bad. In one respect, “The Town” was superior to “The Fighter.” The former had many wide shots of Boston which established a sense of place for the various scenes while “The Fighter” showed Lowell only close up. The wide-view, both good and bad, was lacking from the screen. The high point of “The Town” for me had to be Lowell-native Jack Neary’s performance. He played one of the robbery victims and, while he didn’t have a speaking role, he conveyed absolute terror through his facial expressions.

Below is the trailer. It wasn’t the greatest movie of the year, but it was a pretty good action flick which, when added to its local setting and color, makes it worth seeing:

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