This would've been a perfect movie if we didn't see Ben hiding the money in her garden. In the end it would've been brilliant if she was gardening and found the money and we never saw Ben Affleck putting it there. That was a big fail for me. It ruined her surprise for me.
Frankly, I think that the whole ending to The Town fell flat. It would've been a better ending if Doug had been caught and Claire put on probation for receiving stolen goods, and helping a known violent criminal escape justice.
Thank you for your input, shiftylee. Doug MacRay, like his friends/accomplices in crime, was also a sociopath, but with a human face. He put on a facade of being likeable, which, in reality, was a cover-up for the kind of person he really was--an unlikeable person who was just as prone to unprovoked violence as his permanently-incarcerated father was. Like father, like son, if one gets the drift.
Doug was no hero for giving Claire his blood-stained loot money, either.
I disagree with you here, Biggs111Mr. Doug MacRay was far from a hero, especially when he gave Claire a whole duffle bag full of his blood-soaked money.
He wanted her to live the life she deserved. The money he put in the bag probably was the same money he stole from the bank & he wasn't really a bad person. He only hurt & killed bad people like that nasty florist & his buddy & those lowlife guys that tried to scare the girl. I thought he was a cool guy with some issues.
Again, I disagree with you here, Biggs111Mr. Bank robbers are desperate, stupid and/or vicious people who will not hesitate to seriously injure or kill anybody that they think is standing in the way of getting what they want, and Doug MacRay was definitely no exception. Neither were his cohorts, for that matter.
The fact that Doug MacRay did kill a couple of people, even after telling Claire that he'd never killed anybody, makes him a hypocrite, in addition to being a criminal. It wasn't Claire's fault that Doug MacRay and his gang knocked over her bank at gunpoint, took her as a hostage, blindfolded and kidnapped her, but my sympathy for Claire totally went out the window when she not only got involved in a wholesale romance with Doug MacRay, but acted in an extremely arrogant and bitchy manner towards FBI Agt. Frawley who was trying to carry out his assignment and do the job of bringing Doug MacRay and his fellow criminals to justice.
Claire's using Doug's blood-stained money for the renovation of the Charlestown skating rink, rather than turning that blood-soaked money over to the proper authorities and finding more honest ways of procuring that money also turned me off to sympathizing with her, as well.
Doug MacRay was exploiting Claire, because it was clear that his purpose was to keep her from giving the FBI the evidence that she had--the "Fighting Irish" tattoo on the back of Jem's neck.
Yea the girl should've given that money to the Feds but she doesn't need to turn in Doug because she loved him. Girls love bad boys as u can see here again. I see your points & it's good but I still like Doug but not his crew. His crew was really no good especially Jem. I didn't get that vibe from Doug. He had issues but he had a conscience & he cared about people.
Doug was probably a little more stable and mature than than Jem, but one has to ask why he kept making one bad decision after another. He came from a rather dysfunctional family--a whole nest of bank robbers, his mother became a heroin addict and committed suicide by hanging herself.
Doug had too steep a price tag on his head, and, even if Claire did love him, the idea of their being together was a pipe dream, if one gets the drift. I think that, deep down, both Doug and Claire knew that they could not be together.
Thank you for seeing my points and understanding where I'm coming from on this one.