Analysis: “The Town”

The Town is an excellent movie, one that uses the five primary character archetypes. My analysis below.

SPOILER ALERT: DON’T READ IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW KEY PLOT ELEMENTS!

I see the character archetype breakdown this way:

Protagonist: Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck)

Nemesis: F.B.I. Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm), Fergus ‘Fergie’ Colm (Peter Postlethwaite)

Attractor: Claire Keesy (Rebecca Hall)

Mentor: Stephen MacRay (Chris Cooper)

Trickster: James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), Krista Coughlin (Blake Lively)

PROTAGONIST

Doug is part of a gang of thieves, the brains of the group. His Disunity: Basically a good guy doing bad things. After his gang robs the bank, kidnapping Claire in the process, James (who has a violent streak) decides they need to take out Claire as she is a potential witness. Doug says he’ll handle it. He tracks Claire, eventually intersecting, then falling in love with her — another Disunity element, sleeping with a potential enemy (as far as James is concerned). A third Disunity dynamic: Doug is living a lie with Claire because he does not tell her that he was part of the gang that kidnapped her.

There are more Disunity elements, both involving Doug’s parents: Doug’s father is serving multiple life sentences in prison because he led a life of crime, also based in Charlestown. So Doug has a father who isn’t around. Also absent is Doug’s mother who, according to family lore, walked out on Doug and his father, never to be heard from again.

What does Doug want? To be with Claire. What does he need? To face up to the fact that at his core, he’s a decent and good human being who should not be involved in illegal activities. This puts the story squarely in mythic territory, a modern spin on a classic Western where the gunslinger wants to put away his gun for good — but circumstances don’t allow it.

NEMESIS

Doug’s predicament is complicated by the fact that he has two Nemesis characters: First, there is Frawley who has had it up to here with all the criminal activity centered out of Charlestown, and makes it his personal mission to bring down Doug’s gang.

Then there is Fergie who threatens to harm Claire unless Doug pulls off one last robbery: Fenway Park. It also turns out — major reveal — that Fergie was involved with Doug’s mother, getting her hooked on drugs, eventually leading to her death.

ATTRACTOR

The Attractor is Claire — and this is the only relationship that feels a bit strained to me (more on that later). As an Attractor, Claire connects with Doug’s heart, helping him to get in touch with his Core Of Being (i.e., goodness), one major motivator toward his decision to leave the gang.

MENTOR

The other motivator derives from the single visit he pays to his father in prison. Stephen serves as a Mentor, providing dark wisdom, the subtext of which is, “If you continue your life of crime, Doug, this is where you’ll end up.”

TRICKSTERS

Finally there are two Tricksters. The primary one is James. His desire to see Claire dead, his insistence on the second heist, his resistance to Doug leaving the gang — each an example of his enemy aspect. And yet, it turns out that James shot and killed someone who was out to murder Doug, then spent nine years in prison as a result — Trickster as ally.

The other Trickster is Krista, who used to be Doug’s lover and still wants to be, but eventually turns against him and provides key evidence that leads Frawley and a phalanx of law SWAT team members to Fenway Park for the movie’s Final Struggle.

Re Claire as an Attractor: I thought she fell too quickly for Doug. Granted she is in a vulnerable state after having been kidnapped, reliving over and over those few tense moments where she was released by the gang, still blindfolded, and told to keep walking until her toes touch water, unsure if at any second she would be shot and killed. Doug is sympathetic to her and supportive, yes. But even though they have been separated by only a few miles in terms of where they live, their respective lives have been utterly different — her a bank manager, him a robber. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so perfect — volunteering with youth, working in a community garden — it wouldn’t have been as much of a stretch to see her fall in love with Doug, but given everything the movie does right, it’s a minor quibble.

Here is the most non-conventional aspect of the movie: There are only three action sequences: the opening incident (bank heist), the hit on the armored car, and Fenway Park. In fact, the opening ends at minute 7 and the second action sequence (the armored car) commences at minute 48. That’s 41 minutes without any action. What happens in those 41 minutes? Interaction. Lots and lots of it. And here’s the thing: All that exposition, all of those scenes where it’s essentially characters talking — they work.

Why? Because the characters are interesting. The subculture of Charlestown where crime is an accepted part of life is interesting. The FBI agents are interesting.

To wit: The Town is not an action movie. It’s a drama — with some action in it.

There is one scene where Doug and Claire are at an outside eatery, when James shows up. This is the first time Doug knows that James knows Doug has not handled the Claire situation, but instead is seeing her romantically. Talk about sleeping with the enemy! Also Claire has confessed that although blindfolded, she did see one physical feature of her kidnappers: a distinctive tattoo on the back of one of their necks. That would be James. Who sits right next to Claire. So in this scene, Doug is living with the fact that James, a hot-head, has busted him… and at any given moment, Claire could see the tattoo whereby the proverbial shit could hit the fan. It is simply a great scene.

Finally the movie hits it central theme all the way throughout, even going so far as to have Doug articulate it. At one point he tells Claire [paraphrased from memory]: “There are people who wake up each morning who say they’re gonna change, but they never do. I am gonna change.” In the denouement, a letter penned to Claire and heard as Doug’s V.O., Doug says [paraphrased], “I guess the road to change just had a few more turns on it than I expected.”

As with most commercial movies, the theme of metamorphosis is at the heart of The Town, and handled quite well.

Definitely worth seeing. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see the movie pick up some award nominations including Best Adapted Screenplay.

Comment Archive