the Fretless Bass reviews: The Town

I'm glad I saw The Town before I finished The Prince of Thieves, because now I can enjoy them both. Never read a book because it's movie is coming out, and if you do, see the movie before you finish the book, because most book-movies would be good as stand alone films, but don't hold a candle to the paper version, so they get crucified. If you see the movie first, you enjoy it, and then you read the book and like that too, everyone wins.
The Town did a lot of things right, Ben Affleck had a good Boston accent, it was filmed on-location, and they didn't overdo the violence. The thing I really liked about The Town is how they made a real effort to make the city a part of the film, which would result in locals liking it more. Being from the Boston area, I can tell you that they shot all the public-set scenes in Boston, because nowhere else in America are the streets so narrow.
Now to the meat of the review. The Town is about a career bank robber who falls in love with a woman he took hostage in one of his hold ups, and decides he wants to get out, which of course is not as easy to do as it sounds.
The thing that made me really like the film, along with the interlacing with the city itself, was how they made most of the characters in a moral gray zone. There's your main character Doug. He's a bank robber, but he has a heart of gold. Then you have your FBI agent that's hot on his tail, he's doing the right thing, but he is willing to do anything and everything to catch Doug. It shows us that crime and crime fighting aren't black and white.
Normally by this time I would be prepping to verbally assassinate the movie, but The Town only has one fatal flaw, it portrays Boston and Charlestown in a bad light. The movie refers to Boston as "the bank robbery capital of the world" which it is not. It also portrays Charlestown as a place where all the crime in New England is centered, I happen to know this is also not true. I have a family member who used to live in Charlestown, and whether you were in crimeville depended on if you were in the projects or not.
To sum up a review, I'm going to buy The Town on DVD, that's how much I liked it. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go snuff some Cheerios.