There are a lot of reasons that I really wanted to like THE TOWN, not the least of them being that the town in this case was my hometown of Boston (well, Charlestown, but close enough). They did make excellent use of the city as a location and photographed it beautifully. The movie has a great cast, well directed by Ben Affleck, and there are individual scenes that are very well written. Affleck himself has a great monologue early in the film. The first act of the film is very involving, but the plot meanders too much, takes too long to get where it's going, and ultimately falls apart in the third act.
The single biggest problem in the film is that all of the characters are unlikeable. I kept rooting for the lead characters, a group of bank robbers led by Affleck's character, to get caught. The most sympathetic character in the film is the girl who is a victim of the robbers. He ends up dating her, which should have made him sympathetic as he softened, but instead, she disappears from the movie in the second act and their relationship is never really fleshed out. As a result, there is no emotional payoff in the final scenes.
It's too bad, the movie had a lot going for it, and a few simple script changes early on could really have made the film a lot better.
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