Perhaps one of the most popular action-drama subgenres is the robbery motif. Since the birth of the silver screen, moviegoers have been enthralled and strangely fascinated by grand thefts and intricate heist schemes.
Despite whether that’s indicative of a larger societal symptom, good heist flicks tend to have a few key ingredients—coordinated team of robbers, a grand plan, attractive women, fancy car chase scenes, and frequently the dichotic appeal for the audience to empathize and root for both the bad guys and the good guys chasing them.
In Affleck’s second directorial project, The Town, the traditional robbery plotline is enhanced with a few additional ingredients—accepting your life as it’s been shaped by previous generations versus breaking out of it, choosing between family and morality, and love versus self-preservation.
Based on Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves, which is centered on Charlestown, a one-mile-square neighborhood in Boston that is notorious for breeding the most bank robbers in the States. Affleck himself plays the leading character, Doug MacRay, head of an organized heist team, who is struggling between loyalty to his friends and breaking out of his sinful lifestyle. We learn that his mother left when he was six and his father (portrayed brilliantly by Chris Cooper) is paying for his life of crime in a maximum-security prison.
Despite whether that’s indicative of a larger societal symptom, good heist flicks tend to have a few key ingredients—coordinated team of robbers, a grand plan, attractive women, fancy car chase scenes, and frequently the dichotic appeal for the audience to empathize and root for both the bad guys and the good guys chasing them.
In Affleck’s second directorial project, The Town, the traditional robbery plotline is enhanced with a few additional ingredients—accepting your life as it’s been shaped by previous generations versus breaking out of it, choosing between family and morality, and love versus self-preservation.
Based on Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves, which is centered on Charlestown, a one-mile-square neighborhood in Boston that is notorious for breeding the most bank robbers in the States. Affleck himself plays the leading character, Doug MacRay, head of an organized heist team, who is struggling between loyalty to his friends and breaking out of his sinful lifestyle. We learn that his mother left when he was six and his father (portrayed brilliantly by Chris Cooper) is paying for his life of crime in a maximum-security prison.
