The Town is more proof that Ben Affleck is better behind the camera

It’s cool to make fun of Ben Affleck.  Conventional wisdom was that Affleck and Matt Damon made the leap with Good Will Hunting, but it turns out that most of the talent the duo had was with Damon.  While the acting side of things certainly favors Damon, Affleck is acquitting himself well from a directing standpoint.  I’ll admit to having not yet seen Gone Baby Gone, the first film he directed, but I can say his latest, The Town, shows that he has some real talent working from behind the camera. This talent makes a film worth seeing, but Affleck definitely has some room to improve as well.

The Town opens in a quite intense manner, as we get an in your face style bank robbery with all the thieves in masks.  As much as I hate to just explain one scene, this opening basically sets up the entire story of the film and is not really a spoiler.  Affleck uses this scene to set up the primary conflict of the movie, namely that his character Macray is the calm leader who acts tough but doesn’t want to actually hurt anybody and that Coughlin is sort of crazy and will actively seek out reasons to hit people in the face with the butt of his automatic rifle.  As the thieves make their escape, Coughlin takes a young bank manager, Claire (Rebecca Hall), hostage in case they need  leverage at a potential stand-off with the police.  After successfully escaping without such a stand-off, they let Clair go, unharmed.