Forget your Paul Brunicks [who he?] opining in Film Comment. Ty Burr's review of The Town puts paid to any discussion of whether local film critics still matter, and why the Globe, hobbled as it is thanks to owner NYT's debt to Carlos Slim, should be lauded for keeping TWO full-time film critics on staff. Enjoy Ty [with Wesley Morris, who was off singing karaoke Beyonce at TIFF, I hear] above, but then direct yourself to the extensive excerpts from Burr's review below that demonstrate writing to and for your readership. Gather 'round, children:
I don’t care what anyone outside the greater metropolitan area says: “The Town’’ takes place in Movie Boston rather than the real thing. Movie Boston is a sub-Scorsese landscape of stubbled men walking down mean Suffolk County streets that exist primarily in the minds of good pulp novelists and bad screenwriters, and its authenticity depends far too much on Hollywood actors trying hahd to bend their dialogue around non-rhotic speech patterns.
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Is “The Town’’ authentic? Hell if I know — I’m from Brookline. For that matter, the director’s from Cambridge, and the curse of this city’s clannishness (one of them, anyway) is that you can never speak to the reality of the next town over without somebody getting their panties in a twist. That’s partly the point of both Chuck Hogan’s original novel (“Prince of Thieves’’) and this adaptation: A community that takes so much pride in insularity will eventually choke on it. But Affleck’s more interested in townie mythologizing and borrowed Lehane-ian street cred; did I mention he’s from Cambridge?
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The knowingly chosen locations lead up to an amusing performance by Fenway Park as itself, and the grand absurdity of a high-speed police chase through the narrow streets of the North End has been thought out with devilish care. For once the geography in a Boston movie makes sense; even the standard shot of the Zakim Bridge has relevance.
