Boston Cinema

In the 15 years since Good Will Hunting was released, perhaps no city has been more represented cinematically than Boston. From the adaptations of Dennis Lehane's novels to occasional film from Matt Damon or Ben Affleck, audiences are privy to a recounting of an entire city's modern crime history and its generation of fatherless children. Frequently, the screenplays do not attempt to attribute an overarching motive or reason for the crime aesthetic. And when they do, the answer is always the same: family. Like a Bushido oath, a life of crime is seemingly inherited from father to son and brother to brother. Despite having many male relatives serving decades in prison and coming from broken homes or foster care, the sons maintain a stoic attachment to their forebearers that inevitably dictates their futures. The Town, written and directed by Ben Affleck, is a superior genre picture because it places itself within this Bostonian crime heritage.

Affleck gives significant mileage out of the locale, because, unlike a slew of similar genre films, Boston is as much a character in these films as the people themselves. Rather than try to hide identifying features by using aspecific surburban stand-ins, the gold dome of the Boston State House, Boston Harbor, and Fenway Park are all showcased to consciously fixate the film in a specific place. Ordinarily, this might appear as flashy posturing to unnecessarily draw attention to the scenery, but this is not the case. Affleck smartly incorporates the local fixtures into the story to illustrate the different socioeconomic backgrounds of his main characters. Doug is a working class, second generation (at least) criminal from Charlestown; Claire is a white collar, Bank manager transplant from a rich neighborhood. The film never directly attributes their plights to their upbringings, but it lays out all the pieces for that conclusion. Whereas Claire is funded enough to be able to quit her job and still afford a picturesque loft apartment, Doug and his friends are always in search of more money despite being in the lucrative trade of robbing banks. The Charlestown Boys and Girls Club has no ice for the hockey rink and even the local garden is overgrown and haggard. These realities are not attributed to fate or circumstance. Claire, Doug, and even his friends all allude to the government's disregard for the community and its inhabitants. Because of this, the local criminals are seen as heroes.

Crime then becomes a matter of pseudo civic virtue and vigilantism becomes justice. Like his father and like his "brother," Doug robs and eventually murders but is not portrayed as a villain. At the film's end, he uses the money to relocate and escape and leaves the rest to be donated for the local ice rink. He is the hood with a heart of gold. Through narration and exposition, we learn that when he was younger his hockey talent gave him a way out, but he squandered it. Like Chuckie Sullivan from Good Will Hunting, he is wiser than he is intelligent. He understands that he is too gifted for manual labor but too stubborn for an honest day's work. For him, it's simpler and more honorable to level the playing field through petty thievery and chicanery than to go it straight.

However, if the tortured genius of Will Hunting and the wasted potential of Doug McCray are possible outcomes that both lead to flirtation or outright affairs with crime before Joycean departures, we see one other possibility: working for rather than against the system. In Mystic River while Jimmy Markum is a crime boss, Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) becomes a cop. In Boondock Saints while the Brothers MacManus are hitmen with a higher calling, Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe) is the FBI agent leading the hunt for them. But in these films, the cops and criminals are both motivated by similar passions of revenge and redemption. In The Departed, all of the main characters (Billy Costigan, Frank Costello, Colin Sullivan, even Sgt. Dignam) have allegiances, hidden and apparent, on both sides of the law. In The Town as well, Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm), while being an FBI agent, is more ruthless, predatory and conniving than the criminals. Amazingly, Affleck has managed what 5 years of womanizing and chronic alcoholism could not: he has demystified Don Draper. The ease and natural smoothness he displays while seducing Krista Coughlin belies a deeper truth -- that in the cinematic Boston, police are the thugs and criminals are the defenders.

The unnatural inequalities present in Charlestown are what foster the breeding ground for crime. Simultaneously though, crime is a life raft and an anchor for the town. Despite their best misguided efforts at escaping lives of ill means and repute, the Bostonian men are perpetuating the destructive cycle that has lead to their predicament. While they toil away in jail like Stephen MacRay or die prematurely like Jem Coughlin, their wives and sisters and children "survive" them in name and trade only. The smart ones leave and become cops (or filmmakers), the honest ones get blue collar jobs, and the "honorable" ones follow in their fathers' footsteps. If the recent cinematic history of Boston has taught us anything, it is that in Boston and particularly in The Town, there is honor amongst thieves.