How 'The Town' crystallized the Boston crime film cliche

In 2010, we first watched Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner and Blake Lively navigate the neighborhoods of Boston in the cops-and-robbers flick "The Town."

"There are over 300 bank robberies in Boston every year," the FBI special agent, played by Jon Hamm, says in the film's trailer. "Most of these professionals live in a one-square mile neighborhood called Charlestown."

For Radio Boston's "Set in Boston" series, we discuss the movie with local film critics Ty Burr and Allyson Johnson.

On how this film was received upon release in 2010:

Burr: "Well this movie was just past the crest, or you could argue it may have been the crest of the renewed Boston crime film. It came out after 'Mystic River.' It came out after 'The Departed.' And it came out after 'Gone Baby Gone' — which was Ben Affleck's sort of resurgence. He directed that film. He'd kind of been in the pop culture dog house before that, and with directing 'Gone Baby Gone,' he sort of reestablished himself as a credible filmmaker. For the first time he went on to win an Oscar for 'Argo.'

"But with 'Gone Baby Gone,' which to my mind is really one of the best neo-Boston crime movies, he sort of set the stage for a lot of the memes [that have circulated in the years after the film]. With 'The Town,' I think he sort of solidified those memes. To me, it's a movie that's almost the Aristotelian ideal of the Boston crime film, so much so that it feels in places like it's — I'm not gonna say it's stereotyped or cliched — but it feels like it's working in plot elements that feel like we know them so well. These are stories and characters that are familiar to us by now."

On tropes used in "The Town":

Johnson: "There's a lot about the film to me that is dated now and probably arguably was dated then, especially in how they portrayed their female characters. But I do think the one thing that kind of can stand the test of time is Jeremy Renner and Ben Affleck's brotherhood, so to speak, and the idea that you will follow somebody if you have a shared history, sometimes through thick and thin, even if it's against your own sense of morality.

"But I think that's one of those things in revisiting where I am struck by the tropes and I am struck by how Rebecca Hall's character is just there to be the saint. And vulnerable, and saintly vulnerable. And there to open Ben Affleck up to this world of possibly being a decent human being. So to have her, and then to have the Blake Lively character who is the opposite end of that, to have the mother who's out of the picture — it just kind of brought up all these tropes of how not to write women that I thought is really engaging and interesting to kind of revisit now."

On Jeremy Renner's performance: 

Johnson: "I think he's the reason I probably went as quickly as I did to see ['The Town'] originally was because I had seen the 'Hurt Locker' and I loved it and I loved him. He still was very good in 'The Town' and I think he has the best, most tragic scene in the entire film. And it's a throwaway. He leans over to take a sip of a soda before making a really big decision, and that might be the closest to capturing 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle.' So I think he's amazing, and I think he shows so much beyond the kind of bad guy veneer that the character is showcasing.

"I think I remembered him being in it more, so to rewatch it I was like, 'He's a huge part of why it succeeds and they did not utilize him as much as they could have.' But I think he is the reason to watch this movie."

On the legitimacy of the Boston accents:

Burr: "I will point out that [Jeremy Renner's] accent is pretty darn flawless. And we can talk about accents in every Boston movie we talk about. I do wonder if Ben Affleck [who is from Cambridge] had his accent beaten out of him in Hollywood. Because it sounds good, but it sounds a little practiced."

Johnson: "I think [Renner felt more comfortable in his skin than Ben Afflect did]. In controversial opinion, maybe, I think that's just because Jeremy Renner's a really good actor, and I think Ben Affleck sometimes struggles for that level of believability and authenticity, even when he's essentially playing somebody that he might have grown up around. And he can't recapture it. I think there's too much thought, like Ty said, it's practiced. He's thinking way too much in the moment of how he's supposed to sound."

On the same story being told about Boston: 

Burr: "To me, 'The Town' was the movie — and I don't dislike the Town, I think it's a perfectly OK movie — but it was the movie where the cliches of the Boston crime film started to ossify. And leads to that famous Seth Meyers parody Boston movie."

On what a better movie trope about Boston would be:

Johnson: "The student aged population. This is a student city, a young, young city. I was here mainly in my early 20s. To maybe showcase that, or even do a party movie in a university, or to show the struggles of people who work and go to school — to show that energy and capture the real life grind that we're all going through while we're here. That would be really fun, relatable, and offer it up to a lot of new perspectives."