The Town is a movie about a lot of things. What it tries hardest to be about is a certain community in Charlestown, MA. It is a community of bank robbers, into which protagonists Doug (Affleck) and James (Renner) were born, and how its way of life is similar to other cultures and other communities. It is also about people escaping from their past and about uncertain, sacrificial love (both man-wife and parent-child). The movie starts with a bank robbery in which Claire (Hall) is taken hostage and blindfolded. She is eventually sent free without a mark on her. She is approached by the FBI (Hamm), but offers them very little except suspicion of criminal involvement. Doug starts following her to make sure she doesn't confess anything incriminating to the FBI, but soon develops a profound and all-encompassing love for her. He wants to quit his career to be with her, hoping that she will never find out the truth between how they met and how they know each other. But of course this wouldn't have been turned into a movie if life were that simple.
The directing is more than competent, with sharp cinematography and efficient editing, although a few times it felt trite or simplistic. Similarly, the script was well-written with a few concepts made overly obvious to the point of numbing bluntness. The acting was all around fantastic, although nothing really blew me away. All in all this is a technically competent movie with tense action scenes and a complex set of relationships. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to fans of excitement and/or crime.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840361/