The Town

Bank Robber + Pretty Lady + Seedy Criminal Underworld = Drama!

Nominated for:
Best Supporting Actor - Jeremy Renner

A criminal with a heart of gold falls for a pretty lady, but can't shake his criminal past, mostly due to a borderline psychotic best friend and an FBI agent (played by a surprisingly vulgar Jon Hamm) out for blood. We've all seen this before. This film could have been either a really great heist movie, or a really poignant social drama - but, in this case, straddling the two genres just takes away from either side. Case in point - Pete Postlethwaite shows up in a small but key roll, and is awesome. But then, so does Blake Lively, who is most definitely not awesome.

I'm scratching my head as to why Jeremy Renner is getting recognized for this. Is he nominated due to residual admiration from The Hurt Locker? Or is it because he (*spoiler alert*) goes down in a hail of gunfire?

It's not terrible. It's mediocre, and thus, forgettable.

Eli

On the Eli Scale, it gets a 2 for innovation, a 3 for emotion and a 3 for coherency.