It’s an old-fashioned thriller: hard, square, solid. Ben Affleck’s second successful film, The Town, is an old-fashioned dark series: men have a code of conduct, women are deadly, the streets are dark and the police are harassed. The story, based on the novel by Chuck Hogan (“The Prince of Robbers”), focuses on a series of rampant scams. In Charleston, a suburb of Boston, the robber’s job was transferred from an Irish family to an Irish family. The father is a gangster and the son is a thief. Three hundred bank robberies a year. Pegriots disguised as nuns, skeletons or security guards enter the banks and show off their hunting rifles, wait until the trunk clicks, pile up the loot and go clean. Except for that crime, of course, no money will be paid. Well done.

Excellent, intelligent and efficient director

Ben Affleck, discovered with “Will Hunting”, is a slightly more handsome actor: he was as restless as a doorknob in “Daredevil” or “Games of Power”. Surprise: As a director he is intelligent, intelligent, simple and efficient. Quite the opposite. His first production, a short film, was “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hanging Her From a Butcher’s Hook, and Got a Three-Movie Deal with Disney”. Second, a feature film was notable: “Gone Baby Gone” was specifically about kidnapping children who were complex and moving. With “The Town”, Affleck confirms. No special effects, no display, but an acknowledgment of Kubrick’s “Altime Razia” (1956) and sympathetic humility.

In addition, the director gives Ben Affleck one of his most beautiful roles: a man torn between his loyalty and swallowed up by a dark past, a prisoner of sponsors. The city with its networks and friendships holds children in an iron fist. Last break, freedom? The illusion of collapsing under the bullets of the police, the deadly illusion. “The Town”, or the blues of the mocker.

Sunday, June 20 at 10:45 pm in France 2. American thriller Ben Affleck (2010). With Rebecca Hall, Ben Affleck. 2:03.