This Ben Affleck crime thriller gets a much different rip-off in the book

Ben Affleck’s career as a director and actor has been a series of ups and downs. One of his peaks was from 2007 to 2012, when he turned to directing, winning People Back, culminating in a Best Picture win for “Argo.” (This preceded the fall of 2016, when Affleck plays Batman It started off on the wrong foot, and his next film, Live By Night, was a disappointment.)

Affleck’s second film is 2010’s The Town, in which he plays bank robber Doug McRae, who falls in love with bank teller Claire Casey (Rebecca Hall) after his crew takes her hostage during a robbery. And you thought your parents had a wild story about “how we first met”! The city mentioned in the title is Charlestown, a Boston neighborhood that had a reputation for a high number of burglaries. Supporting characters include Doug’s deranged right-hand man James “Jim” Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), Jim’s needy sister Krista (Blake Lively), and FBI agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) who thinks he’s a yuppie. Melvin Purvis.

“The City” is based on the 2004 novel “Prince of Thieves” by Chuck Hogan. It is a brilliantly written thriller worthy of comparison. Dennis Lehane Outside Boston only. Both the book and film contain three heist sequences: the first is at the bank where Claire works, and the third is a robbery at Fenway Park. But the second one is completely different in the book and movie.

In the movie, Doug and his buddies rob an armored car disguised as nuns — crumpled plastic face masks and all. Nuns with assault rifles are certainly a striking image, which is why this robbery was the most heralded of the film’s set pieces; The posters and trailer highlight Doug and Jim in their sacred customs. But neither those costumes nor that robbery are present in “Prince of Thieves.” There, the second robbery is the destruction of a movie theater. Yes, a movie theater. It may seem trivial for a crew to destroy banks, but it’s all a matter of time and place.

“The City” has a contemporary setting, but “Prince of Thieves” is a period piece set in 1996. Throughout the novel, Doug, Jim, etc. are emphasized as the last generation of Charlestown native sons who would be criminals. White-collar professionals (such as Claire and Frawley) have moved to the city and struggle to maintain its Irish immigrant and working-class identity. The 1996 setting means that the themes of increasing improvement make more sense; By 2010, that battle in Boston had already been lost.

Affleck explained in 2020 interview with The Ringer: “I (shot) this movie in the 2000s, but it was actually about the ’80s and ’90s in Charlestown. I kind of pretended that Charlestown was still the same as it was before. But it really wasn’t. It was “Taking a period of time that has passed and pretending it’s still real.”

The book takes place in the 1990s also Explains why criminals believe cinema is a pot of gold. Doug and company pull off the heist just in time for the summer movie season (with plenty of textual references to real-life 1996 movies like “Mission: Impossible” and “Twister”). However, these days, when attendance at movie theaters is declining, and even safe bets can turn out wrong, the idea of ​​starting a movie theater because they have a lot of money shows the age of the story.

Is this why this scene was cut in the movie? Anthony Vieira’s Movie Theater has a different premise: You don’t want your audience sitting in the movie theater thinking the place is about to be robbed.

The armored car robbery is a better fit for the film’s structure, too, as it leads to a car chase through the narrow roads of Boston’s North End. The film needs some action like that in the middle to avoid a rut, and it climaxes with a unique comedic beat: Doug and his crew, still wearing their nun masks, get out of their getaway car and see a cop staring at them from the other side. side of the road. They stare at each other in silence for a moment, but then the cop (in no mood to get into a shootout with four M-16 rifles) literally It looks the other way.

This change leaves the structure of “Prince of Thieves” nearly intact throughout “The Town,” but it’s not the only change the film makes. In the book, the crew wears stylized hockey masks during their first heist. And in another stroke of inspiration from costume designer Susan Matheson, the film replaces that with blue and black skull masks with long hair. (See above.) Twisted skull masks are even creepier and scarier Hockey masks will put on the “heat” of theft very intensely.

The biggest change the city has made is… He does The effect on the story is to allow Doug to escape. (Except in the alternate ending of the extended cut, anyway.) In the book, he is shot and limps back to Claire’s house, dying in her arms. He realized in his final moments that they never had a future together, and he had bet all his hopes on her in the same way Christa had bet on him. The final chapter of “Prince of Thieves” is a prologue that goes back to just before the heist began, showing how Doug’s fate was sealed by his own choices – the movie theater or the armored car, where he was still a criminal.