The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)

Let's get a couple of things out of the way. The Avengers opens on such a hollow note that its entire first act struggles to find any kind of footing at all. Trapped between a need for some basic exposition and a total disregard for anyone foolish enough to wade into this film without having seen its multiple-franchise foundations, The Avengers thus has nothing for anyone as it slowly, ever so slowly, brings together its collection of superheroes. And though I've never previously bought the charge that Joss Whedon is a smug writer, I nearly blushed at the self-satisfaction in some early exchanges and setups, so obvious and fan-massaging that their cynicism threatened to divorce me entirely from what I hoped would be Whedon's big break. Maybe all that trash-talking he'd done over the years for those who "misread" or "mishandled" his early film scripts was just a smokescreen for a writer whose considerable gift for television writing simply didn't translate to the more concise storytelling of cinema.

Then, something happened that has not occurred in any of the Marvel films leading up to this blowout: the movie kept getting better. Most of the previous films started with intriguing concepts and approaches before fizzling out in half-baked, perfunctorily executed action romps that served only to set up the chess pieces for this picture. Even Captain America, easily the best of the Marvel Studios franchise starters, dipped a bit in the middle, though it differs from its peers in that it finished strong where movies like Iron Man, Thor and The Incredible Hulk ended on lame notes. But The Avengers swaps the usual Marvel dynamic, moving out of a dull, lazy setup into something clever, well-observed and, ultimately, thrilling. By the time everything fell into place, my laundry list of complaints evaporated in the pure rush of Whedon's ambition.

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011)

The trait that links all four Mission: Impossible movies, each helmed by a different director of wildly differing stylistic sensibilities, is a certain amount of incomprehensibility. De Palma's original, which has aged better than any of its successors, is a smorgasbord of that filmmaker's love of audience manipulation, leftist politics, and metacinematic pranksterism. John Woo's sequel is, if anything, even crazier, replacing the peevish joke structure of De Palma's satire with pure, free-form abandon. J.J. Abrams' installment significantly pared down the twists and turns of the franchise's plots, making for the most conventionally satisfying of the series, yet the one that leaves me the coldest.

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, the first live-action venture by animation superstar Brad Bird, is at once the most gargantuan, ridiculous of the movies and the most cogent entry, occasionally explained to the point of tedium. It makes for an uneven effort, one that comes alive every time Bird stages another setpiece and grinding to a halt when the holdover influence of Abrams' pedestrian hit weighs down every bit of dialogue. Happily, Bird, perhaps self-conscious about the expectations upon him, absolutely loads his movie with fantastically over-the-top sequences that make for perhaps the most popcorn-worthy of this franchise.

The Town

After turning his career 180 degrees with his expertly economic take on Dennis Lehane with Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck appears to be on a mission to claim the city of Boston as his cinematic turf. Just how Bostonian is his heist movie The Town? Its climax takes place at Fenway Park. Oh my Gahd.

Compared to its haunting predecessor, The Town aims lower. Rather than dig into the psychology of a missing child and the moral quandary presented by her neglectful, addicted mother, The Town contents itself to be a taut, B-movie thriller. And yet it is also denser than Gone Baby Gone, trying not only to work as a heist movie but a coming-of-age tale and a romance. Essentially, it mashes up clichés from three different kinds of movies into something that has no right to work but does, thanks to Affleck's economic direction and his sure-handed ability to get fine performances from his actors.

After using his previous film to promote his brother Casey's considerable talent, Affleck uses his latest to build off the acting comeback of Hollywoodland by playing Doug MacCray, a failed hockey player who returned in disgrace to the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, where, opening title cards tell us, the highest concentration of bank robbers in the world are born. With a father serving several life sentences for robbery and murder, Doug continues on the "family business," leading a crew of thuggish, arrogant townies whose appearances belie their intelligence and capabilities. When they rush into a bank at the start of the film, they establish a professional precision in no time. They know when the silent alarm goes out, when the safe's time lock opens, where the tracers and dye packs are placed in money, how to make sure no one does anything stupid (including collecting cell phones), and they bring bleach to get rid of any evidence they might leave behind. In a five-minute stretch that includes no prior discussions of planning or obligatory shots of blueprints -- though those do come later -- Affleck conveys just how experienced these four guys are with their work.

The heist goes off without a hitch even though someone trips the silent alarm, but the gang takes the manager, Claire (Rebecca Hall) hostage just in case. Having watched her co-worker beaten by one of the robbers, Claire is rattled, and even when she is released without harm she can barely stop shaking for days. When the gang discovers that the woman lives four blocks away from them, Doug tracks her down and winds up falling in love. It's just stupid and crazy enough to be brilliant, and as much as women in film are constantly set up to help a man grow up, Affleck avoids the trap of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

For one thing, Claire is too shaken up to actively bring Doug out of his own stew of self-pity, and we're basically watch a couple repair their relationship after a big shock rather than have them meet and be totally happy until the Big Misunderstanding. Doug helps Claire through the post-traumatic stress disorder that he helped give her, while she inspires him to really try to leave the game he never seems to enjoy, not nearly to the same extent as his best friend Jem (Jeremy Renner, unabashedly channeling Jimmy Cagney).

Jem pressures Doug about the relationship, and his fears are not unwarranted. Bearing down upon the gang is an FBI agent, Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm), a man who's been on the force so long that he has no qualms with overstepping certain ethical boundaries to intimidate cooperation from the tight-knit Charlestown community. I know I just waded waist-deep into clichés, but there's no way to talk about The Town without bogging down in various things you've all heard before.

So let us instead talk about why it remains an enjoyable film. Renner builds off his Hurt Locker buzz brilliantly, even if he continues to play an arrogant, self-absorbed, dangerous man whose rash behavior threatens the cohesion and effectiveness of a group of thieves as much as it does a special Army unit. Jem sees Doug as a brother, and when the weary gang leader speaks of leaving this destructive lifestyle behind, Jim does not disguise his unwillingness to release his friend. Hamm, so memorable on Mad Men, offers a number of fine reasons for continued work on the big screen, from his chiseled look to his ability to maintain some semblance of decorum even as the fury begins to seep out of Frawley's eyes. Paired up in a surprisingly funny double act with Lost's Titus Welliver, Hamm fuses the broad comic talent he shows on his appearances on 30 Rock with the more severe side of his dramatic acting. He's often funny, but not in a way that necessarily makes you laugh.

Even the minor characters are perfectly case. Blake Lively plays Jem's sister and Doug's ex-girlfriend, and her Oxycontin-addled behavior adds a layer of tragedy to the film. Doug wants no part of her anymore, leaving her to raise her 19-month-old baby alone. From the moment you see her, you know she'll be the ones the cops coerce, and when they finally come knocking, all she can say is, "Why is it that I'm the one who's always getting used?" Chris Cooper has one scene as Doug's father but he makes it count; locked away in prison, this gray-haired, bespectacled man still talks of settling disputes with younger inmates and asserting control over the other gangs. Beneath his hardened exterior, however, is a sad, old man who will sit in a cage until he dies, all because of absurd notions of honor among thieves. Pete Postlethwaite, one of my favorite "that guys," also makes an appearance as "The Florist," the man at the top of the robberies who exerts brutal dominion over the various crews and knows just how to hurt them in order to keep them in the game as long as they're useful.

As for Affleck, he never oversells the point as he often did in the past. He has a few meaty chunks of dialogue that force him to put on his "acting face," but he hasn't seemed so natural since his heyday with films like Chasing Amy and Good Will Hunting. Compare the way that he lets his facial language do the talking to the trailer of his next starring feature, The Company Men, which played before The Town. Granted, it's unfair to judge by a trailer, but that film offers glimpses of Affleck at his most ingratiating and "Robin Williams-esque," trying too hard to sell an obvious point. When he starts slipping into Serious Mode here, his style is in-keeping with the B-movie vibe, and he never gets ahead of himself.

His direction, however, is even better. His editing in the opening heist is fast but measured, a healthy blend of the frenetic, modern pacing and a more classical style. The Town boasts one of the better car chases in recent memory, bumping up against the Paul Greengrass style of incomprehensible shots of shrieking, crunching metal without jumping fully into shakycam waters. Some of Affleck's inter-cutting can seem awkward, but when he matches shots of Doug and Claire having sex with Claire being released by Doug and the gang at the beginning, the obtuseness of comparing her orgasm to the euphoria of finding out that she would not be harmed after all becomes somewhat beautiful.

A Michael Mann film this is not, despite the clear influence that director exerts over the picture, yet Affleck still has an eye for detail. One of the most suspenseful moments of the film involves Jem stumbling across Doug and Claire and trying to mask his surprise. Meanwhile, Doug, who knows that Claire might recognize the tattoo on the back on Jem's neck and alert the cops, attempts to keep the tattoo out of sight. Similarly, the blood on Claire's shirt, splattered on her when Jem beat her co-worker, triggers memories in the audience as well as her, and it's a shame that Affleck felt he needed to then insert some shots of the robbery to remind us.

Unfortunately, Affleck wants The Town to be too many B-movies, so it occasionally meanders when it leaves behind the romance and the thrills for a more preposterous coming-of-age/midlife crisis story. When the elements click, however, it's a damn fine film. Most of the dialogue is to-the-point and carries the kind of wit that normally comes from someone older and more familiar with the subject matter: as Welliver and Hamm brief other officers about the gang, they note the limitations placed on them by due process but also of the ways that those laws have been bent. "We'll never get 24-hour surveillance unless one of these idiots converts to Islam," says Dino.

That unforced humor, mixed with the thrilling heist and chase scenes and the fitfully endearing romance, makes The Town uneven but rewarding, a film that embodies countless tropes and modes but manages to funnel them into something enjoyable. It's also a B-movie that doesn't rely on irony, which is a nice change of pace from even the more entertaining movies like Machete. It's earnest and eager, maybe too eager, and if it's a step-down from the triumph of Gone Baby Gone, it's also proof that the previous film wasn't a fluke and that Ben Affleck could well find a way to fuse his mainstream appeal with his desire to make genuine art.

The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker understands what makes a great war film. It is not apolitical, as many claim, but its politics are naturally and almost imperceptibly stated through the characters' actions, not their words. While a few great war films can wear their politics on their sleeves (Platoon), it's almost always more enjoyable to see minimal or at least vague rhetoric in the service of something deeper (Apocalypse Now). Bigelow's film fills the space left by its lack of open polemics with the the natural conversation of men too preoccupied with survival to discuss their various affiliations.

And tension. Unbearable, teeth-chattering tension. The tension of this film is so ever-present, so skillfully maintained, so...tense that at one point I noticed my hands were actually shaking. I nearly closed my eyes at several stages, as though I were watching an effective horror film. Which it is, essentially: The Hurt Locker is the story of a specialized type of warfare within a specialized type of warfare, where the faceless enemy is even more hidden.

Concerning the exploits of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team, the film presents us with a group of soldiers who volunteer for one of the bravest tasks in the force: locating and disarming IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). On this battleground, a remote-detonating cell phone is more dangerous than an AK-47, and a pile of rubble can be either debris or a deathtrap.

Following the death of Bravo Company's previous team leader, Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) must welcome their new leader Sgt. 1st Class William James. Jeremy Renner gives one of the year's best performances as James, a cocksure ball of swagger and indifference who is at once the Army's ideal poster boy and everything that is wrong with the American mindset in Iraq. He's also what I believe they used to call "certifiable": on his first day, while other two still mourn their previous sergeant, he forgoes the safety of using their bomb-detecting robot to uncover a suspected IED and just dons a protective suit and checks it out himself. As he walks down the street, he's sure to make a show of it, as much for his new teammates as the Iraqis looking on from windows and roofs.

James' style puts him at odds with his more conventional teammates, to say the least, but you can't argue with results. After he successfully diffuses a car filled with enough explosives to take out a city block, an ecstatic colonel sings his praises as asks the soldier how many bombs he's disarmed, and James (in a rare show of humility) mumbles, "873, sir." He keeps the various triggers of his victories as morbid souvenirs in a basket along with his wedding ring ("all the things that nearly killed me," he chirps), and Eldridge and Stanborn only look on in revulsion. Each of these men fits a loose soldier archetype -- James the cocky one; Stanborn the cool, by-the-book operator; and Eldridge, the one who didn't realize what he signed up for and is slowly losing it over the stress of his job. That's understandable, I might add; I nearly lost it over watching a dramatization of it.

But writer Mark Boal, who spent time reporting with an EOD team and came up with the much of the material for Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah, sidesteps simple classifications and presents us with real people. Apart from a forced line at the start when James tells the men he's not "trying to replace Thompson," their conversations don't fall within the usual war movie talk of bad C.O.s and their opinions on why they fight. Their conversations and actions reveal their myopic views of the war, however; James views all of the Iraqis as merely spectators to his talent show, while the other two just see them as potential targets. James grows fond of a young Iraqi boy hawking DVDs to the GIs, but when he believes the boy was killed by insurgents he's so blinded by rage that he doesn't notice the kid saying hello.

I mentioned the tension earlier, but only in superlatives: Bigelow uses shaky cam footage in the most artistic, appropriate setting this side of a Paul Greengrass film. The draw of shaky cam is its purported ability to draw us into the action and make us a part of it, but too often it smacks of gimmickry. Bigelow's style allows her to capture the utter confusion of these soldiers' jobs, and every cut away to an observing Iraqi only bolsters the feeling of dread. She will make you fear the nondescript metal canisters -- actually, that's one of only two gripes I have with the film; why is it that all of the improvised explosive devices look the same? -- and the scene where James follows a wire to its source, lifts it up only to uncover five bombs surrounding him is bone-chilling.

There's also a scene out in the desert, where our team stumbles upon contracted mercenaries (and I was certainly surprised to see Ralph Fiennes among them) carrying two of the most wanted terrorist leaders and are suddenly ambushed by a sniper team. This protracted sequence, involving only a handful of enemy combatants, is as insular and nail-biting as the grandest battle scene is bombastic and horrific. The audience let out audible groans when Stanborn missed one of his extreme-long-range shots, but they did not cheer when a round did hit its target. Stanborn and James sit on their perch, utterly immobile as flies buzz on their eyelids and in their mouths, as wind gusts blow sand in their faces, for hours, and you can feel the passage of time. This sequence, for all its simplicity, belongs on the short list of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed. It is a masterclass in suspense and realism.

Bigelow has a way of presenting us with all the horrors of Boal's script without exploiting them, nor does she glorify (or condemn) these men. I say men because I noted the complete absence of any female soldiers in the film. I thought it was odd that Bigelow would not portray any women, which speaks more to my white male liberal guilt than it does any shortcomings on her or Boal's part. But I remember an interview with a female specialist given to Stephen Colbert in his recent Iraqi tour about the role of women in the service, and I looked it up and was shocked to discover that the closest a woman can come to a combat position is military police. I'd kind of like to see a film about that, though it would likely be preachy as hell.

At its heart, The Hurt Locker serves as a first-person view of the consummate terror of the current state of warfare, where enemies and allies are neither immediately identifiable nor constant. When James heads toward a bomb for his first defusion with his new company, a taxi driver nearly drives right into him, leading to a tense showdown with the sergeant fearlessly standing down a man who fluctuates between confusion and hatred; soldiers eventually take the man into custody, and James snidely remarks, "If he wasn't an insurgent, he sure as hell is now." The pressure of this doubt affects the men in different ways: Eldridge struggles to maintain his sanity, Sanborn adopts a by-the-book attitude that belies the skills he would have learned and used in his previous work in intelligence and, one can infer, allows him to brush off potential failure onto faulty directions. James, of course, finds a sick thrill in the unknown, and when something finally does penetrate his solipsist fog he's too egotistical to pay complete attention to it. His biggest display of a humanity is but a small basket -- the titular locker -- filled with pieces of all the bombs he defused, a perverse shrine that subtly reflects how, in some way, the job is taking its psychological toll on James as well, even if he never shows it.

In the epilogue, Bigelow follows a soldier back home for a time, at first too big a jump from the grittiness of Iraq but once your eyes adjust it paints a clearer portrait of these men, all brave and truly heroic but perhaps in the military because Iraq, for all its dangers, frightens them less than "normal" life. Plus, the forced perspective shot of the endless cereal aisle is a fun touch. Simply put, this is the finest film yet made about the Iraq war, and the finest picture concerning modern combat since Black Hawk Down. A mixture of Generation Kill's front-line honesty and one of the tensest thrillers of recent memory, The Hurt Locker is a triumph on every level and a film that's worth going out of your way to see.