Wars and prisons change people (c) Ben Affleck was just an actor for a long time. He had a lot of good roles and good films, you can think of Armageddon or Pearl Harbor, but as a director he remained unknown to me for a long time, until yesterday, until I met his first feature film “Goodbye, Baby, Goodbye”. She, you can say, struck me with her ingenuity, endurance, tension, and a rather semantic ending, as a result of which Affleck became for me no longer an actor, but a young director who gives great hopes, but his second full-length work “City of Thieves” directly did not justify my hopes.
Doug McRae lives in the Boston suburb of Charleston and, along with his friends, robs banks and collector cars. During one of the raids, the team takes the bank manager Claire hostage. Later, they release the girl, but Doug decides to check if she poses a danger to them. He seems to accidentally meet her, but the acquaintance gradually develops into love, which forces Doug to choose which side he is on.
You can, in principle, draw some parallels between these two films, they are shot in similar styles, but if his first work was visible zest, there was ingenuity, I felt the inspiration of the director who was shooting this film, I felt the actors who were in the frame, I felt all the drama of one of the final scenes, I just felt the film and for this alone you can applaud the novice director. In his first film, I would say, "Bravo!" Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about his second job. “City of Thieves” is a typical representative of the crime drama genre, there is nothing expressive, nothing brilliant, there is no outstanding idea. On the screen we see a rather banal film, which, in comparison with the same “Fight” did not bring anything new to the genre. If you like, “City of Thieves” can be called one of the representatives of total cinema, which is, for example, “Casino”, but honestly, Affleck seems to be too young for this kind of film. You can see that the director is interesting, he is trying to dig into the souls that in "Goodbye, baby, goodbye", which is here. Honestly, I think he will like the melodramatic genre, and ideally, that the spouses were on the verge of divorce. I think that will be exactly what he needs. But for the criminal genre he is still too young, and to mow under Martin Scorsese is not prohibited by law, but the audience will not appreciate it. Maybe I’m the only one who’s finicky, because in general, the audience likes the film even more than his first work. I'm sorry.
Honestly, the scenario could have developed more vividly, even by the same Affleck, but if he was older, then so at 60. I think 38 years is too early for a movie like this, although I have to admit it was a desperate attempt. But again, even though I think of City of Thieves as a pretty average movie, I'm almost thrilled with its debut, Goodbye Baby, Goodbye, so I'm looking forward to his next work, which I'm sure is just around the corner.
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