Ben Affleck’s career as a filmmaker and actor is a series of ups and downs. One of his highlights was from 2007 to 2012, when he turned to directing, won people back, and capped it all off with a Best Picture award for Argo. (This happened before the fall of 2016, when Affleck’s appearance as Batman He got off on the wrong foot and his next film, Live By Night, was a disappointment.)
Affleck’s second film is 2010’s “The Town,” in which he plays bank robber Doug MacRay, who falls in love with bank teller Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) after his crew takes her hostage during a robbery. And you thought your parents told some crazy “how we met” story! The city in the title is Charlestown, a Boston neighborhood once known for a high number of robberies. Supporting characters include Doug’s troubled right-hand man James “Jem” Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), Jem’s needy sister Krista (Blake Lively), and FBI agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm), who believes he’s the yuppie Melvin Purvis.
“The Town” is based on the 2004 novel “Prince of Thieves” by Chuck Hogan. It is a skillfully written thriller that more than deserves the comparison Dennis Lehane outside the Boston area. There are three robberies featured in both the book and the film: the first involves the bank where Claire works, and the third involves a robbery in Fenway Park. However, the second case is completely different in the book and the film.
In the film, Doug and Co. rob an armored car dressed as nuns – crumpled plastic face masks and all. Nuns with assault rifles are definitely a striking image, which is why this robbery was the most advertised scene in the film; In both the posters and the trailer, Doug and Jem are highlighted in their holy habits. But neither these costumes nor this robbery appear in “Prince of Thieves.” There, a cinema is destroyed during the second robbery. Yes, a cinema. It may sound petty for a team destroying banks, but it’s all a matter of time and place.
The kidnapping of nuns in the city is not in the original book
“The Town” has a contemporary setting, but “Prince of Thieves” is a period piece set in 1996. Throughout the novel, Doug, Jem, etc. are highlighted as the last generation of native sons in Charlestown who will be criminals. Employees (like Claire and Frawley) have moved in and the town is struggling to maintain its Irish immigrant and working class identity. The 1996 setting means that themes of increasing gentrification make more sense; By 2010, the battle in Boston had already been lost.
Affleck explained in a 2020 interview with The Ringer: “I made the film in the 2000s, but it was actually about the 80s and 90s in Charlestown. I pretended that Charlestown was still the way it used to be. But it really wasn’t. That’s it.” Take the amount of time that has passed and pretend that it is still reality.
The book takes place in the 1990s Also explains why criminals would think a cinema is a pot of gold. Doug and Co. plan their heist for the start of the summer movie season (with numerous references in the text to real 1996 blockbusters like “Mission: Impossible” and “Twister”). However, these days, when movie attendance is declining and even safe bets can lead to failure, the idea of building a movie theater because it has so much money shows the age of history.
Is that why this scene was cut from the film? Anthony Vieira on the film stage has a different hypothesis: You don’t want your audience, when sitting in a cinema, to think that the place is about to be robbed.
How The Town changes the original Prince of Thieves book
The armored car heist also fits the structure of the film better, as it leads to a chase through the narrow streets of Boston’s North End. The film needs some action like that in the middle to keep it from going off the rails, and it climaxes with a unique comedy beat: Doug and his crew, still in nun masks, get out of their getaway car and see a police officer chasing them staring from the other side of the street. They stare at each other in silence for a moment, but then the cop arrives (not in the mood to engage in a shootout with four M-16s) literally looks the other way.
This change largely preserves the structure of Prince of Thieves in The Town, but it’s not the only change the film makes. In the book, the crew wears stylized hockey masks during their first heist. In another source of inspiration from costume designer Susan Matheson, the film swaps this for blue-black skull masks with long hair. (See above.) The dreadlock skull masks are much scarier and Hockey masks would lay the “heat” of the robbery on too thick.
The biggest change “The Town” makes is does The story is influenced by him letting Doug escape. (Except in the alternative ending of the extended cut, anyway.) In the book, he is shot, limps back to Claire’s house and dies in her arms. In his final moments he realizes that they never had a future together and that he had pinned all his hopes on her, just like Krista had pinned on him. The final chapter in Prince of Thieves is a prequel that goes back to just before the heist began and shows how Doug’s fate was determined by his own choices – movie theater or armored car, he was still a criminal.
