Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

A rich, dark, pulpy mess of entanglements that fulfills all the requirements of the genre, and is told with an ease and gusto that make the pulp tasty.

Boxoffice Magazine by Pete Hammond

If "Heat" and "The Departed" had a baby, the result might come close to The Town, a riveting and explosive crime thriller and one of the year's best pictures.

Newsweek

Affleck directed, stars in, and co-wrote The Town, a suspenseful, fiercely paced movie about bank robbers that is also about love, brotherhood, and the desperate need to escape a crooked life. It proves that "Gone Baby Gone," his accomplished directing debut, was no fluke.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

In The Town, he (Renner) doesn't signal that Jem is a sociopath... It's a deeply unnerving performance, beyond good or evil.

Variety by Justin Chang

The behind-the-camera talent Ben Affleck displayed so bracingly in "Gone Baby Gone" is confirmed, if not significantly advanced, in The Town. Again proving a fine director of actors (this time with himself in a starring role), Affleck delivers another potent, serious-minded slice of pulp set on Boston's meanest streets, where loyalty among thieves runs thicker than blood.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

A pretty decent crime drama - not a patch on the best parts of his directorial debut, 2007's "Gone Baby Gone,'' but it's moody and grim and engrossing if you approach it with the right expectations.

Village Voice by Nick Pinkerton

It's good enough at least that you wish it was better.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Affleck the movie director makes you truly, badly want his bunch of ne'er-do-wells to pull off their heists without a scratch, and you can't ask for much more than that. [20 Sept. 2010, p. 120]

The Hollywood Reporter

Affleck gets the tribalism of Boston's traditionally Irish-American enclaves; it's a defining force in his character's lives. But for all their well-played grit, those characters resolutely remain types, and for all the well-choreographed action, the outcome doesn't matter nearly as much as it should.

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

There's more than a few things off in this tale of a disillusioned professional thief (Affleck, dull), his unlikely inamorata (Hall, wasted) and the determined FBI agent (Hamm, solid) out to apprehend him.