This year marks the 10th anniversary of Ben Affleck’s Boston crime-opus The Town. In honor of its release, we bring you 14 other movies that you should add to your watchlist if you enjoyed this iconic addition to the Irish-American crime-drama. While not all these movies are centered around Bostonians, or even take place there, they all share strong thematic and stylistic ties that can be grouped under the loose umbrella terms of “heist” or “crime movie”. Now, without further ado:
Next, we have Ben Affleck’s predecessor to The Town and his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. A seminal entry in the Boston crime-drama movie canon—and adapted from a book of the same name by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the Mystic River novel which the movie was based on—this is a similarly bleak, unforgiving mystery thriller/portrait of people in crisis.
This story centres around the disappearance of a three-year-old girl, who Private Investigators Patrick (Casey Affleck, Ben’s brother), and his partner/lover, Angie (Michelle Monaghan) are hired to find. The girl’s mother (Amy Ryan, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance), Helene, is a drug-addict who is revealed to have been involved in some shady dealings with her drug supplier. In similar narrative style to Mystic River, the plot leads you in one direction before completely upending your expectations. The movie ultimately serves as a morally ambiguous, emotionally charged, devastating and unwaveringly honest depiction of people struggling to do the right thing while at the most extreme cross-roads.
