Best Picture: The Town

We’re counting down what we think are the best films of 2010 (put in the context of the Oscar race, specifically, which makes a difference in how you view the best). Last time it was Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s twisted, brilliant take on life in an institution for the criminally insane. Shutter Island, like Black Swan and Inception are films that dive into the psyche. It seems fitting we would be doing that now, in 2010, with a dragging economy, a frightening future and unending war. What else can we do but turn inward? But another film that made its mark this year, however quietly with the critics was Ben Affleck’s The Town. Leagues better than Gone Baby Gone, with a brilliant cast head up by Affleck himself in one of his best performances, The Town is probably one film I worth repeat viewings as the years go by, the main reason being that it’s just balls-out entertaining.

A second viewing of The Town reveals the clever dialogue throughout. It isn’t just a heist movie, but one of those rare films where the script is everything. Somehow, Jon Hamm’s blinding beauty managed to mask much of his dialogue, but see it again and listen to what he says and how he says it.

The Town taps into something gnawing at our collective consciousness right now, that we can’t really count on the people in charge because they all seem to be lining their pockets with our financial mistakes. The Town fits right in with films like Inside Job and Client 9 because it is about screwing back those who have screwed us, and there is a deliciousness in that.

But to me, The Town is a cinematic triumph because of Affleck’s command of the action scenes, and his versatility to then go deeper with the relationships between the two female characters. It’s unpretentious, pulpy and way more fun than just about any other movie I’ve seen this year. Sometimes you really do have to just unplug and let yourself be carried away. The town did that for me.

The best performances in The Town include Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Blake Lively, and Ben Affleck. It’s an ensemble to die for. How the SAG didn’t notice this is beyond all reasonable logic.

The Town has been named one of the ten best of the year so far by the Critics Choice and the American Film Institute.

RYAN:
A regular lament from movie writers and moviegoers alike is the jarring plug-pulling disconnect when the raw thrills of summer are swapped for the sometimes stuffy and over-fluffed prestige of more awards-friendly films. (Let’s phrase it that way instead of the derisive and dismissive “baity”.)¬† We complain about too many fast-paced entertainments constructed to push the right buttons for teenage boys — but we confess to the same guilty pleasure we get whenever those slick entertainments are done right. Sadly most movies that give us that visceral rush of adrenaline never explore the depths they need to qualify for consideration as a serious adult drama.

Didn’t used to be that way. The 1970s gave us a string of grown-up crime thrillers that stand alongside the best of that decade or any other. The French Connection, Straw Dogs, Mean Streets and others, culminating with the pinnacles, Chinatown and The Godfather I & II. In the same era we got a remarkable series of films by the master of urban crime character studies, Sidney Lumet: The Anderson Tapes, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon. We’re always on the lookout for a director who might be The New Hitchcock, and to call a movie ‘Hitchcockian’ is the highest form of praise. But how about Lumetian? Who might inherit the mantle as master of cops-and-robbers movies from Sidney Lumet? Some will point to Michael Mann. After the debut promise of Gone Baby Gone and this year’s leap to top-tier status with The Town, I’d propose it’s now time to consider Ben Affleck is in line to inherit that mantle too.

There’s a direct line to be drawn from the themes and style of Dog Day Afternoon, through Mann’s Heat, landing this year in the latest urgent incarnation with The Town. Incidentally — and I think significantly — all three of those movies are landmark films from Warners Brothers, and the first trailers we saw in July for The Town reminded us: “From the Studio that Brought You The Departed”. Some snarkers scoffed at that, but I love it. Harks back to the time when Warners Bros owned the town with a remarkable era of classic noir. It’s Old School pride in production. Warners has an enviable recent track record developing intelligent suspense thrillers so they have plenty to be proud of.

All this is a roundabout way to express my admiration for what Ben Affleck has done with The Town, and to express my appreciation for filmmakers who know action doesn’t have to be brainless; who understand that the best excitement relies on making us care about the characters onscreen. (Is it interesting that Lumet’s Prince of the City shares a title formulation with the source novel of The Town — Paul Hogan’s Prince of Thieves?) Sidney Lumet knew that the fastest way to make our hearts pound was to make us feel for the tormented soul behind that pulse. Maybe better than any other director of populist crowd-pleasing entertainment this year, Ben Affleck knows it too.