The Town: Critic Reviews

The Town is a thrilling actioner, but deeply personal and moving as well. Ben Affleck takes a giant leap forward as an artist with this film.

A rich, dark, pulpy mess of entanglements that fulfills all the requirements of the genre, and is told with an ease and gusto that make the pulp tasty.

Essential viewing for connoisseurs of dropped r's, close-cropped hair and aerial views of the city that used to call itself the hub of the universe.

Acts so big and tough that it soon grows faintly ludicrous.

Though the narrative is a conventional one, the well-acted, suspenseful story deals in fascinatingly murky morality and mines intriguing material from a historic and complex city.

Affleck made a quietly astonishing directorial debut a few years ago with the taut, atmospheric mystery Gone Baby Gone. With The Town, he proves he's no one-hit wonder.

If Affleck's doing a riff on the sexy, doom-laden antiheroes of '40s film noir, Renner's doing straight-up Cagney, and he's the most watchable thing in the movie.

It misses on the big emotional gut-punch -- but it's good enough at least that you wish it was better.

The Town marks spotty-careered actor Ben Affleck's second time directing -- and with this deft crime drama, he more than proves that he deserves to sit behind the camera.

Ben Affleck works both sides of the camera to impressive effect in The Town, a dramatic thriller that fulfills its considerable ambitions.

Affleck's direction is clipped when the plot requires, but he lingers on character-driven scenes (at a garden, a restaurant, a corner) in no apparent rush. Why hurry, after all? He's arrived.

The Town doesn't reinvent the wheel. It just does what it does with great conviction and a sky-high level of execution. It also forges ahead with one of the best Hollywood second-act stories in recent memory.

Ben Affleck's follow-up to his gritty directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, proves the actor/director/co-writer is here, baby, here to stay.

The Town digs a little deeper under its genre conventions and character commonplaces to work its way to being a very satisfying and unexpectedly moving experience.

Everyone in The Town shines, even Blake Lively, but it's Chris Cooper as MacRay's imprisoned dad who astounds.

Affleck the movie director makes you truly, badly want his bunch of ne'er-do-wells to pull off their heists without a scratch, and you can't ask for much more than that.

Here is a well-made crime procedural, and audiences are likely to enjoy it at that level, but perhaps the mechanics of movie crime got in the way of Affleck's higher ambitions.

There's a decent movie in The Town, though this adaptation of the Chuck Hogan novel Prince of Thieves stretches out to a misjudged 130 minutes.

This second feature doesn't resonate with nearly as much power, but its suspenseful story of two generations of career criminals in the city's northerly Charlestown neighborhood has a similarly haunting quality.

Affleck works the familiar turf of a cops-and-robbers thriller but populates it with characters who come convincingly, and often creepily, to life.

As an action movie, The Town is good. But as a moody character study, it can be mesmerizing.

A gritty, well-made heist flick weighed down by obvious story progression.

It's a measured, strong performance, certainly one of Affleck's best. Perhaps he can credit his director.

Affleck delivers another potent, serious-minded slice of pulp set on Boston's meanest streets, where loyalty among thieves runs thicker than blood.

The Town is an exciting and extremely well acted film.