I have always been for the underdog and though we won't have to give a benefit for Ben Affleck any time soon his career hasn't really kept pace with his friend Matt Damon since they won a co-Oscar
for the screenplay "Good Will Hunting". Word has been good about his
new starring, co-writing and second film as a director called, "The
Town" and I was rooting for it to be a blockbuster.

I
recently saw a film called "Animal Kingdom" about a criminal family in
Melbourne, Australia and this film is about a criminal 'family' in Charlestown, a section of Boston, Massachusetts.
Both films are action thrillers, both are about feelings but the former
is by an Australian and the latter by an American and it is easy to
tell the difference, though both have actors with sometimes hard to
understand heavy accents though all are speaking English.

Affleck's film shows the violence and the car chases, guns blasting away and what
looks like more than half of Boston's police cars destroyed. Kingdom's
secondary story is about an 'innocent' entering the family and Town's is
about an innocent getting involved, unknowingly, with one of the
criminals. The former uses their second story as a major point where the
latter uses their story to show more carnage and violence.

Obviously Affleck is an actor's director giving each a chance to shine, including
himself. If he wasn't the director, co-writer and star would he be the
only one shown having sex with two different women? Would there be the
shot of him exercising showing off a buff body?  In any case as good as Affleck, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, Blake Lively, Titus Welliver and Chris Cooper, very effective in a cameo, it is Peter Postlewaite who walks away with the film as the gang leader just as Jacki Weaver as the mother walks away with the Animal Kingdom.

I am sure The Town will do good at the box office as an action film but if you have a choice go see Animal Kingdom instead.

As an aside Allen and I disagreed about two things in the film so if you go see it maybe you can clarify for us. Is Affleck's character the father of a child in the film? Did Chris Cooper have his testicles removed physically by Postlewaite's character, as I thought he did, or was it mentally as Allen says?