Boston isn't my hometown by birth, and if I had to choose one, I'd probably pick a town that lies 104 miles east of the town where my family's lived the longest, in the suburbs of the city. But it's the metropolis that I've been in orbit to longest, and so I'm thrilled by how good The Town has the potential to be:
I've always felt like Boston social traditions, particular Boston modes of dress at events like Red Sox Games, are the ones I've mastered best. I'm just barely not one of the people the Mighty Mighty Bosstones lambaste in "They Came to Boston," and I feel a little false claiming any sort of kinship with the sentiments of "I Want My City Back," but the landmarks are all embedded in my mental geography:
All of which is a massive digression on the way to saying that I think it would be truly wonderful if Ben Affleck came into his own as the cinematic champion of working-class Boston. He's always been best as a man who was a little bit lost, as he was so beautifully in Kevin Smith's best period, or as a supporting character, as he is in Good Will Hunting and Shakespeare in Love. He's not the latter in this movie, which is a risk, but he is the former. And Affleck's always been helped by having great actors around him to play off of—as a leading man, he's often been marooned out on his own, without someone to spar with or to try to live up to. He has that in spades here: Chris Cooper is his father, Jeremy Renner is his best friend and partner. Jon Hamm is his adversary. Rebecca Hall is his victim and his lover.
And the movie is turf that Affleck knows, no matter how far he's travelled from, and loves. Like Gone, Baby, Gone, the movie shot in a lot of Massachusetts locations. Unlike Martin Scorsese, who appears to be considering adopting Boston at this late point in his career, Affleck chose the city before he could have possibly considered it as the subject for a movie, went to its schools, roots for its sports teams. There's nothing wrong with choosing a city later in life, of course. But I do think Affleck has a better chance of finding himself and whatever role he's really meant to have in movies after a lot of lost and wasted efforts, by rooting his artistic exploration in the area he knows best.