Does the Trailer for Ben Affleck's The Town Give Away Too Much?
Another day, another trailer that heavily features Jon Hamm. Though while Howl played up his Don Draper persona to almost comical levels, the Ben Affleck-directed The Town gets him out of the suit and into an FBI windbreaker. And it looks awesome. But does it give away too much of the plot?
Probably. Think of The Town as Heat with Boston accents. Hamm takes the Pacino role as the put-upon FBI agent looking to bring a crew of bank robbers to justice; Affleck is De Niro (but with better abs), the leader of a bank robbing crew that relies on precision and big machine guns; and Rebecca Hall -- a bank teller with whom Affleck and possibly Hamm fall in love -- is the monkey-wrench. Cue major plot points, telegraphed character deaths (goodbye, Jeremy Renner?) and a glimpse at what's likely a third-act confrontation.
Affleck co-wrote and directed The Town -- based on Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves -- and the trailer is filled with the same sense of foreboding dread and legitimate Boston accents (no Julianne Moore's allowed!) that coursed through his underrated directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. That film kept its secrets close to the vest in the marketing campaign, however. The Town, not so much. Still, since it looks pretty darn good, does it matter?
VERDICT: Sold.
If the trailer gets yanked down, watch it over at Apple.
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But does it give away too much of the plot?
No. It gave away the entire plot.
Maybe your memory isn't as good as mine, but I don't think Gone Baby Gone was underrated. In fact, I heard much more praise for it than not and thought, hey, well good for Ben.
Then a little while later, I finally saw it and thought: WTF. This is like a goddamned overlong student film with good actors playing bad roles and a directorial hand covered in butter and shards of glass.
But everyone's entitled to their opinion, I guess.
I actually lost interest by the end, precisely because it gave too much away. Now I feel I can skip this and just catch the ending when it inevitably runs on Encore.
You had me at "Heat with Boston accents."
MORE JON HAMM.
In my opinion.