Ben Affleck's career as a director and actor has been a series of ups and downs. One of his high points was from 2007 to 2012, when he turned to directing, brought people back and ended it with a Best Picture award for Argo. (This preceded the fall of 2016, when Affleck is running as Batman got off on the wrong foot and his next film, Live By Night, disappointed.)

Affleck's second film is 2010's The City, where he plays bank robber Doug McRae, who falls in love with bank teller Claire Keesy (Rebecca Hall) after his crew takes her hostage during a heist. And you thought your parents had a wild "how we first met" story! The town in the title is Charlestown, a neighborhood in Boston that once had a reputation for a number of robberies. Supporting characters include: Doug's unhinged right-hand man, James "Jem" Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), Jem's poor sister Christa (Blake Lively), and FBI agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) who thinks he's the one. Melvin Purvis.

The City is based on the 2004 novel Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan. It is a slickly written thriller that more than earns compared to Dennis Lehane beyond just the Boston setting. Both the book and the movie have three heist sequences: the first is at the bank where Claire works, and the third is a robbery at Fenway Park. The latter, however, is completely different in the book and the movie.

In the film, Doug and Co. they rob an armored car disguised as nuns - wrinkled plastic face masks and all. Nuns holding assault rifles is definitely an eye-catching image, so this heist was the most heavily advertised of the film's scenes; the posters and trailer highlight Doug and Jem in their holy habits. But neither those costumes nor that heist are in Prince of Thieves. There, the second robbery is foiled by a movie theater. Yes, cinema. It may sound petty for a bank-busting team, 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, Jem, etc. are highlighted as the last generation of Charlestown native sons to be criminals. White-collar professionals (like Claire and Frawley) have moved in and the town struggles to maintain its Irish immigrant, working-class identity. The 1996 setting means that the themes of increasing gentrification make more sense; by 2010, that battle in Boston had already been lost.

Affleck explained in 2020 interview with The Ringer: “I (set) that movie in the 2000s, but it was really about the 80s and 90s in Charlestown. I kind of pretended that Charlestown was still the way it used to be. But it really wasn't. taking a period of time that has passed and pretending it's still reality."

The book takes place in the 1990s also explains why criminals would think the cinema is a pot of gold. Doug and Co. time their heist around the start of the summer movie season (with plenty of textual references to real '96 blockbusters like Mission: Impossible and Twister). However, in this day and age, when theater attendance is in decline and even sure bets can turn into misfires, the idea of ​​jamming a movie theater because they have so much money shows the story's age.

Is that why this scene was cut in the movie? Anthony Vieira on the film stage has a different hypothesis: you don't want your audience sitting in the cinema to think the place is going to be robbed.

The armored car heist is also better suited to the film's structure, as it leads to a car chase through the narrow streets of Boston's north end. The film needs such action in the middle to avoid doom, and it climaxes with a unique comedic beat: Doug and his crew, still in nun masks, climb out of their getaway car and see a policeman looking at them from the other side. side of the road. They stare at each other silently for a moment, but then the cop (in no mood to get into a firefight with four M-16s) literally looks the other way.

This change leaves the structure of "Prince of Thieves" largely intact throughout "The City," but it's not the only change the film makes. In the book, the crew wear stylized hockey masks during their first heist. In another stroke of inspiration from costume designer Susan Matheson, the film replaces that with blue-black skull masks with long hair. (See above.) Dreadlock skull masks are much scarier and hockey masks would lay the "Heat" of the heist on too thick.

The biggest change "The Town" makes, which does affects the story, lets Doug get away with it. (Except in the alternate end of the extended cut, anyway.) In the book, he is shot and limps back to Claire's house, dying in her arms. He realizes in his final moments that they never had a future together and he has pinned all his hopes on her just as Christa had on him. The last chapter in "Prince of Thieves" is a prequel that circles just before the heist begins, showing how Doug's fate was sealed by his own choices - movie theater or armored car, he was still a criminal.