It is the oldest proper city in the Northeast. It is also the most European of cities in America.  It still has its very old school ethnic neighborhoods, not least of which is Charlestown with its Irish Catholic population.  My wife grew up not far from this city and lived on Beacon Hill during her graduate school days. We’ve prowled these neighborhoods and sampled their wares. Its still to this day a very Catholic town in so many ways.  But there is something else about Charlestown. As the movie ‘The Town’ begins, it regales us with the info that Charlestown has produced more bank robbers per capita than any other part of any major city in America.  Not exactly a statistic the chamber of commerce in Boston was going to put in their brochures, to say the least.

Dougie McCray is a lifer in Charlestown. In fact he lives on Bunker Hill Road, which by the way is misnamed since the hill is in fact Breed’s Hill where the Bunker Hill monument stands to this day.   While Charlestown has a somewhat illustrious past going back to Revolutionary War days, its present is no less colorful— the color of blood, and money, and crime. 

Ben Affleck’s new film ‘The Town’ which is far and away the best movie he has ever done  (yes better than Good Will Hunting which debuted both him and his buddy Matt Damon) either acting or directing, is set in that Charlestown.  In that part of Boston blood is not only thicker than baptismal water, its thicker than the clam chowdah and it leaves a more lasting mark as well.    This 2 hour and 3 minute crime drama is both gripping and taut.  No pork or fat here.  Crime, it would appear, does pay in Boston,  but it also has consequences.  Major life consequences, as Dougie McCray was to find out in due course.

Dougie you see is part of an Irish bank robbing syndicate. His father is upstate in prison for working in that same crime syndicate. But its not just banks, its also an Oxy drug syndicate as well.  You will look hard to find any totally sympathetic characters in this movie.  It may remind you of another Boston crime film of recent and good vintage— Mystic River, and like Mystic River, this movie is very well done, and the acting is first rate as well.  It would appear that Ben Affleck has indeed come of age, grown up, matured, into a better actor and good director to boot. While his directing debut in ‘Gone Baby Gone’ was good, this is better than good. It’s very well done.  People can change……

Which by the way, is the theme of this movie, because Dougie wants to change his life. He meets a woman that makes him want to change his life.  But how can he do that when he owes his soul to the company store?  His best friend went to jail for killing a man who was after Dougie, went to jail so Dougie wouldn’t have to do so.   This movie has the grit and grime and Boston accents of blue collar life in Charlestown right, and appropriately it climaxes at the cathedral of Boston, otherwise known as Fenway Park, where a little team called the Boston Red Sox play.  If you are wondering why its called Beantown, one reason is that one of the Boston baseball teams was once called the Boston Beaneaters, and this town lives and dies with the Red Sox, eats, drinks and sleeps the Sox.  Dougie, is one of those folks, and so it is more than a little ironic he is involved in a heist at Fenway.

This film has several unexpected twists and turns, and I will not spoil the ending of the film for you, but suffice it to say that this is the best crime drama of the year, ranking up there with Shutter Island, and once more the hero is an anti-hero, and the question is raised—– can a man change his own life?  Can he become a better man?  Can he escape his past, or at least outlast it?   And what about those he left behind?    This movie is rated R because of all the shooting, though there is not much gore or blood to be seen in the film, unlike another film I saw this week— Centurion, which is a Roman gore special. 

Do you remember when you were growing up peeling up the front door mat which had lain there for weeks, and discovering that there is a seamy under-life going on below— complete with creepy crawly bugs?  This movie lifts up the doormat in Charlestown to show its lowlife underneath.  Turns out there’s not only pests under there, there’s vermin who can’t stand the light of day.  Are the vermin destined to live a bug’s life…..or can the caterpillar really turn into a butterfly instead of an ugly moth?  Go see this film if this question intrigues you. And be prepared to be surprised by your feelings at the end of the film.  This film is likely to get several Oscar nominations.