It’s kind of easy to forget that Blake Lively was in The Town largely because her involvement was a little obscure and didn’t happen right away. In fact she plays the sister of Jem and the ex-girlfriend of Doug, two of the main characters that are also criminals and embroiled in a deal that’s bound to go sideways on them in a hurry. Her own role in this was to cooperate with the FBI in an attempt to get them pinched and she did so without much arguing. Of course being the ex-girlfriend she was obviously kind of miffed that Doug would think about leaving town without her and might not have needed a lot of motivation to start talking about what she knew.
Blake Lively is a good actress that doesn’t seem to get enough credit and gets cast into some very questionable roles. Her role in this movie wasn’t too bad and it was just brief enough that she didn’t have to maintain it for too long. In other movies however such as Green Lantern and The Shallows she was given something to work with, not much really, but did her absolute best to make it work. Blake’s ability isn’t in question, it’s the wisdom of accepting roles in certain movies that has to be brought into question at times. There’s no doubt that she makes it work as much as she can, but sometimes you can only do so much to bring up the reputation of something that’s already going through the crash and burn sequence.
The Town seems to have suffered from an underdeveloped story and not enough interest that could have swayed it the other way in the box office. It had plenty of great actors in it and Blake Lively, despite having one of the smaller supporting roles, was great for what she was there to do. Her acting isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that she wasn’t given a bigger role that could have possibly helped to keep this film from the dredges. Of course it could also be that the dynamic between the characters needed some work too. Plenty of films are set in Boston and a good number of them go on to gain some very serious notoriety in the film industry, but this wasn’t one of them. This film will be remembered most by those that actually liked it and those that saw it but thought it was just okay.
Chances are people will forget who was in it unless they remember Affleck or Renner or even another one of the costars. Despite her solid performance it’s very likely that few people will remember that Blake Lively had a spot in this film. She put in one of the best performances and she might not even go down in history as a memorable part of this movie, which is sad in and of itself but also kind of regretful since it means that she’s not as highly valued as you might think she should be. Now that’s a big issue that needs to be discussed.
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