The Town

Directed by Ben Affleck. Starring Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite, Chris Cooper 15A cert, gen release, 125 min

A BIG SUCCESS in these territories, Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gonetruly transformed attitudes to the square-headed polymath. Indeed, Affleck the director may draw more people to The Townthan Affleck the actor could ever have managed. The expected hordes (the film has opened well in the US) should leave the cinema reasonably satisfied.

Another blue-collar crime story from unfashionable corners of Boston, The Townjust about compensates for its careering implausibility by layering on beery Irish-American colour and staging numerous tasty action sequences.

Largely set in the Boston enclave of Charlestown – home, a title informs us, to more bank robbers than any other US locale – the picture focuses on the travails of a hoodlum named Doug (Mr Affleck at half speed). We begin with the protagonist and his posse staging a successful raid on a bank in an affluent part of the city. Staged in a thrillingly jittery style that offers the first of many nods to Michael Mann's Heat, the sequence promises a little more than the film ultimately manages to deliver.

Following the heist, Doug is instructed to keep an eye on one of their hostages, a junior manager named Claire (Rebecca Hall), and, in the first nudge towards melodrama, finds himself falling for her. Remember that episode of Peep Showduring which, while on jury service, Jeremy started dating the defendant? Well, it's a bit like that.

Meanwhile, the hero’s best pal, a hardnut played with impressive solidity by Jeremy Renner, is pondering that mythical One Last Job. Doug, who despite his undoubted abilities, doesn’t seem to have the inner zeal for villainy, is bullied into putting his disguise back and shouldering his firearm.

Working from a novel ( Prince of Thieves) by Chuck Hogan, Affleck asks his audience to swallow a great many heightened situations and more than a few broadly drawn characters. Pete Postlethwaite lays it on thick as a kingpin who uses a flower shop as cover. The final moment of redemption is absurdly sentimental, and the decision to stage the least thrilling of the three robberies last is baffling.

Yet The Townnever quite spins off the rails. Radiating an old- fashioned aura of mainstream quality, the picture, for all its occasional silliness, plays like that rarest of things: a thriller made by, for and about adults. I bet none of the team was ever tempted to shoot it in 3D.