The Town - Stadt ohne Gnade

After delivering a more than convincing debut as a feature film director with the superb thriller "Gone, Baby, Gone", Ben Affleck now follows it up with "The Town - Stadt ohne Gnade". This time, however, he does not limit himself to his work behind the camera, but also appears as the lead actor - and thus takes the opportunity to finally prove to even the harshest critics that he can really act.

In the film adaptation of the novel "Endspiel" by Chuck Hogan, Affleck plays Doug MacRay, who pursues a very special profession: MacRay is a bank robber. Not uncommon in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood, there is no other comparable place of its size from which more bank robberies are planned and carried out in a year. But Doug is no simple bank robber. He's a genius, planning every little step of his meticulously planned robberies with his accomplice with a precision that borders on genius. And that's why the FBI hasn't caught him yet - much to the chagrin of Agent Frawley (Jon Hamm), who is determined to put a stop to Doug and his men at any cost. When Doug falls in love with his hostage Claire (Rebecca Hall) after his last heist, he starts to make mistakes. And soon he's faced with a tough decision: should he start a new life beyond crime with Claire, which would amount to a betrayal of his accomplices, his "family". Or should he go ahead with one last, dangerous coup after all?

"The Town - Stadt ohne Gnade" is a decent gangster thriller that, while not quite in the same league as films like "Heat" or "Copland", is still more than convincing in many aspects. As with "Gone Baby Gone", Affleck again manages to create a fairly authentic-looking picture of the area in which the story is set. In doing so, the story invokes the fact that so many bank robbers come from the rather small Charlestown neighborhood, but still he doesn't make an overdrawn gritty problem neighborhood out of the Boston neighborhood in his film, but finds a lot of natural beauty even in the neighborhood that definitely has a not really good reputation, which is reflected in the very good camera work.

One aspect that also works very well are the action sequences, which don't dominate the film, but are nevertheless staged in such a rousing way that they stay in the viewer's mind even longer. Whether it's the bank robbery at the beginning of the film or a spectacular chase through Boston up to the furious finale, Affleck always manages to tighten the tension screw. In between, he allows himself many quieter moments in which he lets the characters develop and establish their relationships with each other. Especially the friendship between Doug and the hot-headed Jem, played magnificently by Jeremy Renner ("Deadly Commando"), but also the romance between the bank robber and his hostage, which is doomed from the beginning, give the film a depth that raises it above the average.

The actors are also above average, starting with Ben Affleck himself, who delivers one of - if not THE - most convincing performances of his career in front of the camera here. But also Jon Hamm, main actor of the great series "Mad Men", gives the desperate, determined to do anything investigator with the perfect mix of dry humor and ice-cold calculation. The scene in which Doug is interrogated by Agent Frawley is one of the acting highlights of the film.

"The Town - Stadt ohne Gnade" does not reinvent the genre, of course, and here and there quite obviously uses the great models of the subject. However, the film does this so convincingly, so exciting and thrilling, that these weak points hardly carry any negative weight. And exactly therefore also applies: for lovers of the levelful gangster cinema absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp