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mpol - wrote on 2012-07-12 18:17
To each their own, Trystan, but I feel way differently about The Town. To me, it was just a hyped-up, cheap, cheesy piece of junk.
mpol - wrote on 2012-07-12 18:02
LeeAnnM, I think that Doug exploited Claire as a go-between when he left her all his blood-stained loot. He was hoping she'd spend it to get the C-town hockey rink renovated, which she did. Claire was stupid...she played right into Doug MacRay's hands and went along with his ruse, instead of bringing Doug's blood money to Frawley, requesting protection, and arranging to turn Doug's blood money over to the proper authorities anonymously. Perhaps a woman who was a little smarter and more saavy than Claire would've done differently by requesting protection from the Feds and helping to set up a sort of a "sting" operation similar to the ones that're often used to catch pedophiles, to catch Doug and send him to jail. But Claire chose the stuipidst, easiest way out, which was inexcusable, given the fact that Claire, who was more educated, had more money and had a decent-salaried job as a bank manager, had many more choices than Jem's drugged-out, alcoholic sister, Krista. Claire chose very poorly, imo, and she doesn't deserve much sympathy, for a more enterprising, smarter woman would've seen through Doug MacRay from the beginning and not taken up with him in the first place.
mpol - wrote on 2012-07-12 17:56
The trouble is, however, is that once you've seen the trailer to The Town, you've essentially seen the whole movie.
mpol - wrote on 2012-07-12 17:54
I also might add that The Town also normalizes the Stockholm Syndrome and its inverse, the Lima Syndrome. One doesn't have to be in any of the helping professions (i. e. psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, etc.) to realize that, while a person who's taken hostage and falls victim to the Stockholm Syndrome (i. e. falling in love with her captor) or the Lima Syndrome (i. e. accepting the overtures of her captor, who falls in love with her), presumably has a better chance of survival in a hostage situation, the victim, in either case, is turned into a person who is at her captor's beck and call, is manipulated and controlled by him, and is essentially brainwashed into believing that her captor cares enough about her not to kill her, and that he'll always treat her kindly and not abuse her. This couldn't be farther from the truth, especially because, all too often, the victim is isolated from her friends and loved ones, and begins to blame law officials and other authorities for her troubles and turn against them rather than her captor who committed this criminal act against her in the first place.That being said, I'd say that common sense is required, in order to at least minimize the possibility of having something like that happen to him or her; Just because one meets a charming guy or gal, doesn't mean that they're necessarily out for any good, particularly if one is in an area that's known to be tough, with a violent history to it. Anybody who meets someone that they've never seen before, no matter where they are, or how charming they may be, should be much more careful, and not be so quick to accept dates with someone or get into things with people they don't know that well.Claire was a woman who used no common sense what. so. ever, and she ended up having a breakdown when it finally backfired on her. Hey...if I'd known her in real life, I'd tell her.."Hey..don't you understand that if you play with fire, you're going to get burned? Think about that!"Supposed the bank manager hadn't been as angelic-looking as Claire, or had been someone with a learning/developmental disability such as autism, Aspergers, dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, or a seizure disorder? Do you honestly believe that Doug and his men would've even acted the least bit charming and sympathetic towards her? I don't think so. Doug would've allowed Jem to do whatever he wanted with her, and she probably would've been gang-raped or "offed" by Doug and his posse of armed criminals. Don't kid yourselves, guys!Doug, contrary to how he came across to Claire, wasn't a nice guy, even to her. He was playing her, and anybody who thinks that Doug and his men wouldn't have killed her if she'd resisted and refused to comply with them is just kidding themselves.
mpol - wrote on 2012-07-12 17:53
To each their own, Spielbergain/Director, but I think that Ben Affleck's an overrated actor generally...and not that good.This is something that still continues to dog me, even though I've written about it so many times. Why, oh why do so many people fall for such a hyped-up, cheap, overrated, trashy movie such as The Town, and, more to the point, refuse to accept dissenting opinions on it? It beats me...I don't know! I admit to one thing, however: The Town left me rooting for the cops and the FBI, especially Agt. Adam Frawley and wanting them to catch Doug MacRay and his men and send them to jail for their crimes, and to have Claire either criminally prosecuted herself for being an accessory to Doug's crimes and for tipping him Doug off with a "sunny days" code and enabling him to elude the law, or at least put on some sort of probation for her bullshit. Sure, I sympathized with Claire at first, because she was the victim of an armed bank robbery, which wasn't her fault, but I completely lost my sympathy for her when she not only got involved, wholesale, in a romance with Doug, but refused to sever all contacts with him even after she learned through Agt. Frawley who Doug MacRay really was, and what he was up to.. Unlike most people, who are sympathetic with Ben Affleck's character in that film, and with Claire, I am not.Why should I be sympathetic to either Doug or Claire? The idea that Doug MacRay wanted to change and redeem himself through Claire is utter bullshit, especially after he engaged in an act of vigilantism by taking the law into his own hands, going back to Charlestown, and gunning down Rusty and Fergie just because they threatened Doug's ladygirl Claire with physical harm. Come on now! Doug MacRay's still a criminal and he was not the decent guy he came across as when he and Claire met "by chance" in a C-Town laundromat.Doug MacRay, like his friends and partners in crime, are not only skilled, disciplined and ruthless in their quest for quick money through parasitic behaviors such as armed robbery, and who'd unquestionably kill or seriously injure people enough to put them in the hospital if they're considered obstacles to what they want, but Doug knows how to come across as a nice guy, when he's really not. He may not be crazy like his best friend and righthand man, Jem, but he's a sociopath and a person of unprovoked violence just the same. The fact that he came across as such a nice, charming guy and deceived Claire by pretending to be an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, when he's really not, is more than disgusting...it's part of his criminal behavior. As for Claire, the fact that she took Doug's bait and rose to it is pathetic indeed.If Doug had really wanted to change, imo, he would've turned himself and his guys in, come forward, negociated with the Feds for some protection for him and Claire, and stopped robbing banks once and for all. Doug left for Florida without Claire for two reasons: A) Doug macRay was an armed felon and wanted fugitive who'd been on the lam from the law for quite awhile, plus he'd just killed Fergie and Rusty.B) Doug had gotten what he really wanted out of Claire all along; a promise from her not to turn him in, which he got.How can so many people be so naive or willfully stupid as to miss that?Also, if Doug wanted to redeem himself, he would've come forward, served his time, and after a prison term, found honest ways to raise the funding for the renovation for the C-Town hockey rink himself, instead of using Claire Keesey as a go-between. What people don't realize is that Doug wasn't a nice guy...even to Claire, even though most people firmly believe that. The fact that he deceived her, seduced her and made a total fool out of her was vicious. The fact that Claire acted like a poor, confused, dumb-assed adolescent and allowed herself to be manipulated, made a fool out of and taken advantage of by Doug is pitiful, but she doesn't deserve pity, due to the fact that she helped the very guy who turned her life upside down and caused her a ton of grief in the first place escape the law. Now that I think of it, I wouldn't cared one iota if Doug and Claire had either ended up in jail, or been shot and thrown into the Charles or the Mystic River. An awful thing for me to say, but that's how disgusted I am with this kind of thing.As for Kristina, well, I don't like her sordid lifestyle or behavior (drug and alcohol addiction, sleeping around with too many men, and the fact that she was in the business herself by helping to book hotel rooms and get costumes for Doug and his men, and being a drug mule for Fergie and Rusty), but i'll say this: I feel kind of sorry for Krista, in a way, because she had far fewer choices than Claire; she'd grown up with Doug and Jem, who, like many other men, abused and exploited her for their own ends. Krista's daughter, Shyne, still an infant, caught in the middle of all this shit, was innocent, and I felt sorry for her, too.I'm so sick of people saying that what the white collar criminals (not defending them, btw) are worse than guys like Doug MacRay and his gang, because it's unrelated, and not true. Neither the book Prince of Thieves, on which The Town was based, or the movie, make any effort to get at causes of bank robbery and other crimes, and the circumstances under which Doug and his men had grown up under. Moreover, the movie asks the audience to sympathize with Doug MacRay and his men, as well as Claire, who acted stupidly enough to allow Doug to take advantage of her, and who became an accessory to his crimes, while considering law enforcement officials assigned to bring criminals like MacRay and company to their knees and have them locked up in penetentiaries once and for all.Dez was a smart (he was college-educated and had a regular job) but stupid guy; he was pretty much just along for the ride, and did what he was told to do by the gang, and yet, at the same time, he seemed to be pretty much their victim, as well, if one gets the drift. Dez allowed himself to be taken for a ride, also. At least the book fleshes out the characters and spends more time on Dez and Krista, and doesn't focus on the viewpoint of Doug and Jem so much, plus the book takes a far less sympathetic outlook towards Doug and his men. Sorry, folks, but I can't bring myself to like this film, except for the very beginning.
mpol - wrote on 2012-07-12 17:51
I still think that Claire helped Doug get away, which was wrong. Unlike you, LeeAnn M, I wanted the FBI to catch Doug, put him away in a Federal penitentiary (where he belonged), and to either criminally prosecute Claire, or put a watch on her and put her on some sort of probation for being such a little patsy and go-between for Doug, who, despite his suave, sweet, gentle, and friendly veneer, was really a sociopath who treated his women like trash.
mpol - wrote on 2012-06-29 09:07
I feel that The Town had the potential for being really good (although not necessarily great) movie, but it fell woefully short of that, due to a mostly poor to mediocre cast (Jeremy Renner was the only really convincing performer in The Town), overdone shootouts and car-crashes that nobody could've realistically lived through, plus the car chases through Boston's North End were also unrealistic, because the North End is too densely populated, too congested, and the streets way too narrow for a getaway to be realistically possible. I thought that the beginning of The Town, with the aerial and ground shots of Charlestown, as well as the opening bank heist, was kind of cool, but The Town just seemed to fall apart and go downhill, for me, in a matter of minutes. The soundtrack was also quite tinny and cheap-sounding, and I found the Doug/Claire romance scenes out of place...and rather nauseating, to boot. They seemed very much out of place, like they really didn't belong in the story at all. Had much less time been devoted to the Doug/Claire romances and more on the heists, and/or a different cast been put in, The Town would've been more believable. I have to admit to one thing; I found myself rolling my eyes to the ceiling every time the Doug/Claire romance was on. The ending in the theatrical version was also quite paltry. As I did point out, I would've liked to see both Doug and Claire suffer some sort of real consequence for their actions and behaviors. Krista, the drugged-out, alcoholic sister of the psychotic "Jem", was no angel, but neither was Claire, as it turned out.
mpol - wrote on 2012-06-27 23:39
Well, LeeAnn M. I feel much differently than you do about The Town. I sympathize with FBI Agt. Frawley and his men who were out to catch Doug and his men. I was rooting for the Feds the whole time, because I really wanted Doug MacRay and his men caught and thrown in jail, and Claire to be criminally prosecuted herself or put on probation for lying to the Feds and siding with an armed and dangerous felon.
mpol - wrote on 2012-06-27 23:35
I also might add, LeeAnn M., that Doug MacRay wasn't the nice guy that he came across, either, even to Claire. He was playing her the whole time, and he put the romance moves on her for one real reason; to get Claire to shut up and not talk to the Feds. What the Feds should've done is made Claire keep her big, fat trap shut, not answer any of Doug's phone calls, let alone phone him, and allowed Frawley and the feds to do the job they were assigned to do; Bring Doug macRay and his guys to trial and to prison for their crimes. I have no sympathy for either Doug or Claire, because they don't deserved any. The fact that Doug deceived Claire by pretending to be an upstanding, law-abiding citizen when he was really a professional armed robber, thug and murderer (as it turned out later) is more than just disgusting; it's part of his criminal behavior, which was vicious. The fact that Claire acted liked a poor, confused, dumb-assed adolescent and rose to Doug's bait was pathetic, but the fact that she took his side even after learning the truth about him, especially since he caused her tons of grief if the first place, imho, doesn't make Claire a sympathetic character.
