Movie Review: The Town (2010)

A crime thriller, The Town combines high intensity action with a thoughtful exposition of characters and place.

The blue collar Boston neighbourhood of Charlestown is known as home to career criminals, with crime legacies passed on from fathers to sons. The cerebral Doug (Ben Affleck) and the more impulsive Jem (Jeremy Renner) are best friends and second generation bank and armored car robbers, leading a gang that acts on orders issued by mastermind "The Florist" (Pete Postlethwaite). Doug's father Stephen (Chris Cooper) is serving life in prison, while Jem served nine years for murder. Doug maintains a choppy sexual relationship with troubled neighbourhood girl Kris (Blake Lively).

The gang successfully robs a bank, but briefly seize manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) as a hostage. They are dismayed to later discover she lives near the neighbourhood and may be able to identify them. Doug gets close to Claire to determine whether she is cooperating with the FBI. They fall in love, complicating his relationship with the rest of the gang members and triggering a burning desire for him to leave crime behind. Meanwhile, Jem begins to exhibit more violent tendencies while FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) starts to close in.

Directed and co-written by Affleck, The Town is an adaptation of the Chuck Hogan book Prince Of Thieves. The film is an expertly constructed and executed character-driven crime thriller. Delving deep into the neighbourhood community, Affleck creates a sense of place where the roots below the surface are thick and deeply intertwined, uncompromising fortitude is embraced as a badge of honour, debts are owed across generations, fathers throw long shadows across their sons' lives, and crime is a family profession like any other.

In classic fashion Affleck places his three action set-pieces at the beginning, middle and end of the movie. The heists scenes fluently capture the thrills, mishaps, and on-the-fly improvisation demanded by high-stakes armed robbery, the rational editing and thoughtful camerawork dramatically enhancing the action.

Even more impressive is the focus on people. Affleck pulls the covers back on a social structure functioning within a set of unwritten codes. While Doug, Jem, Kris and their colleagues will never generate sympathy, Affleck does create understanding for men and women who only know what they know. Doug falling in love with outsider Claire and wanting out disrupts the natural order, and sets off a disruptive and naturally violent chain reaction.

The romance between Doug and Claire has to exist as the catalyst for change, but is perhaps the least convincing aspect of the film. Although it is conceivable for Doug to fall for the girl from the right side of the tracks and imagine her as an escape route to a better life, it is more of a stretch to believe what she sees in him, despite his engineered meet-sad-cute laundromat moment.

The cast is deep in talent and enriches every role. Small turns by Pete Postlethwaite, Chris Cooper and Blake Lively are delivered with chilling conviction, while the more prominent performances by Affleck and Renner exude the requisite grit.

Forceful and absorbing, The Town crackles with coiled and sometimes explosive energy.

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Movie Review: The Constant Gardener (2005)

A geopolitical conspiracy thriller, The Constant Gardener features a rich plot combining an eloquent love story with governmental meddling, corporate greed and exploitation.

British human rights activist Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz) is killed at a remote lakeside location in rural Kenya. She was on a field trip with Dr. Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Koundé) who is now missing and a suspect in her death. Tessa's husband, low-level British diplomat and gardening hobbyist Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), starts to investigate her murder. In flashback, the story of their first meeting and quick courtship is revealed, and they got married before they really knew each other.

She was eager to join him in Africa, where she quickly set about exploring health issues. Tessa grew infuriated with a system enabling pharmaceutical companies to test potentially unsafe drugs on local populations, and demanded help and answers from British High Commissioner Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston) and Sir Bernard Pellegrin (Bill Nighy) of the foreign office. Now Justin starts piecing together what his murdered wife was working on, and gradually uncovers the depth of a conspiracy stemming from the work of the mysterious Dr. Lorbeer (Pete Postlethwaite).

An adaptation of the John le Carré novel directed by Fernando Meirelles, The Constant Gardener is a conspiratorial mystery wrapped in a tender and unique love story. Starting with an unglamorous death, the film delves into Tessa's story to reveal a vivacious young woman poking too hard at the normal course of modern colonialism. Infused with le Carré's trademark jaundiced pessimism around a world run by grey bureaucrats making all the wrong decisions, this is a grim, layered and uncompromising look at unstoppable corruption wrapped in the veneer of foreign aid.

The film is made all the poignant by the retroactive nature of the love between husband and wife. Justin and Tessa married too soon and relocated to Africa. His low key style, metaphorically reflected in the deliberate care and attention he dedicates to his plants, proved too slow for Tessa. Off she went asking difficult questions across Kenya, and they drifted further apart. Insinuations about her having an affair with Dr. Bluhm did not help, neither did men like Sandy lusting after her behind Justin's back.

It's only when Justin starts following the thread of his wife's death that he starts to genuinely get to know her and truly understand her affection towards him. Meirelles weaves this sense of growing attachment and appreciation towards a murdered woman with the unfolding story of exploitation and connivance, dramatically enhancing Tessa's impact despite her demise in the opening scene.

Not everything about The Constant Gardener is perfect. Meirelles tries to cram too many events and characters into the film, resulting in some people and events left stranded, a long 129 minutes of running time and a somewhat rushed ending. But enhanced by the stark yellows of the African landscape and a firecracker of a Rachel Weisz performance balanced by a low-key Ralph Fiennes, The Constant Gardener is a subdued yet scathing denunciation of realpolitik.

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