Summary
Since the 1970s, “theBoston movie” has become its own cultural institution. Spurred by a sudden crime wave, a series of gang wars, and rampant government corruption in the Bay State,this loose subgenre has coalesced over the past half-century into something familiar. By the end of the 2000s, theBoston moviebecame associated with a particular tone (gritty, brooding), set of themes (the ties that bind, disillusionment) and cast of characters–– often including ensemblespairing Matt Damon and Ben Afflecksome combination of Afflecks (Casey or Ben) and Wahlbergs (usually Mark, whose best roles are often in Boston movies).
The Boston movieis also fundamentally an off-shoot of the crime film (though theeminently quotableGood Will Huntingis the exception that proves the rule). Despite all the Boston movies’ familiar conventions, though, the genre mold has proven surprisingly flexible.The Boston movie has delivered numerous highly successful Oscar contenders and allowed directors a compelling sandbox for thrillers,dramas, and even neo-noir, as well as more familiar takes on the police procedural.
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The Boondock Saints
Cast
After brothers Connor and Murphy kill two Russian mobsters in self-defense, they set out on a vigilante mission to rid Boston of crime and violence. However, an FBI agent is hot on their trail.
A classic of the genre, the story behindThe Boondock Saintsis just as quintessentially New England as the final product itself. Hartford-native and aspiring metal musician Troy Duffy wrote the script forThe Boondock Saintswhile he was tending bar in LA. According to the making-of documentary,Overnight, which chronicles the myriad of small-scale disasters the production faced,Duffy was able to get the attention of Harvey Weinstein, whose production company (briefly) financed the film.
This gloriously over-the-top crime thriller about two Irish brothers turning vigilantes after getting fed up with the world’s cruelty is chock-full of guns, one-liners, and five o’clock shadow. It also features a fantastic Willem Dafoe as a gay detective with a twinkle in his eye and opera on his stereo.This one may not be Oscars material, but it’s a certified Boston classic.
The Thomas Crown Affair
The Thomas Crown Affair, released in 1968, follows wealthy businessman Thomas Crown as he orchestrates a meticulously planned heist out of sheer boredom. However, complications arise when personal desires conflict with professional ambitions, threatening his secretive and daring venture.
While many readers may be more familiar with the remake ofThe Thomas Crown Affair, set in New York City, the original film was set in Boston high society. This slick heist movie starsmovie star Steve McQueenas abored genius who conspires to steal millions from a bank for the thrill of it.
Unlike many other Boston movies, this one takesits cues from Hitchcock and James Bond rather than John Cassavetes and Paul Schrader.It’s more aligned with contemporaries likeThe Italian Jobthan it is with the gruffer, rough-and-tumble New Hollywood offerings on the horizon, a laMikey and Nicky. Still, under its dapper exteriors andRope-esque stylings, it’s a Boston movie, through and through.
The Boston Strangleris set within the exact context that eventually birthed the Boston movie as a subgenre.While infamous Irish mobster Whitey Bulger was controlling the streets,Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler,was stalking them, brutally murdering thirteen women in the city between 1962 and 1964.
The movie that takes his moniker for its title is unique among the Boston crime subgenre for its feminist perspective on this oft-documented, long-unsolved case: It followstwo real-life Boston Strangler investigative reporters,Loretta (Keira Knightley) and Jean (Carrie Coon), as they attempt to trace the killer.Where most films in the genre feature only peripheral female characters (typically mothers, wives, and girlfriends), here the two women’s struggles with sexism in the workplace are layered and resonant with a tragic rash of femicide.
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Mystic River
Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood, unfolds the story of three childhood friends—Jimmy, Dave, and Sean—whose lives are disrupted by a tragic family event. Their bonds are tested as they confront past traumas and navigate the ensuing complexities of crime and justice.
LikeThe Boston Strangler, Mystic Riveris an investigative film. This neo-noir, directed byClint Eastwood,was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture,when it was released in 2003, and is one of the pillars of the Boston movie genre. Beginning with a haunting cold-open depicting the abduction and sexual abuse of Dave (Tim Robbins) in mid-1970s Charlestown, the film contends with his trauma in the present, exacerbated by the murder of his friend Jimmy’s daughter, Katie (Emmie Rossum).
While narratively the film centers on the stories of its men (Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn, and Tim Robbins), in a certain sense,the film’s heart lies with the women most impacted by their trauma,making it a narrative precursor to a film likeThe Boston Strangler.For this and other reasons, this somber take on the Boston movie is deeply moving.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
An aging hood is about to go back to prison. Hoping to escape his fate, he supplies information on stolen guns to the feds, while simultaneously supplying arms to his bank robbing chums.
The Friends of Eddie Coyleis arguably the first Boston movie as that designation is currently understood. It tells the story of aging, desperate, hangdog Eddie “Knuckles” Coyle (Robert Mitchum) as he tries to work his way out of a jam with the FBI and debates selling out his contacts in the bank robbing business.
Set almost contemporaneously withThe Thomas Crown Affair,this film’s varied location shooting and cast of naturalistic character actors make it a poignant portrait of a city in the midst of a financial decline. Its characters are defined by their loneliness and the precarity of their ties to their communities, torn apart by the dual incentives of love and money (and the long arm of the law). Though it flopped at the time of its release in 1973,it has since been credited for its contribution to the genre as well as its nuances, its performances, and its style.
Gone Baby Gone
Gone Baby Gone is a crime drama centering on a detective investigating the disappearance a little girl. But soon after he begins digging for the truth, he is victim to a personal and professional crisis.
Gone Baby Goneis another classic of the Boston film subgenre that had already flourished in the years prior to this, Ben Affleck’s directorial debut.This hardscrabble tale of desperate characters and broken families shares a significant amount of DNA withMystic River.Here, a couple (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monahan) work to find their abducted four-year-old daughter, uncovering a web of criminal connections, drugs, and despondency in their tough neighborhood. Its razor-wire tension and grim portrayal of marriages tested and children taken is harrowing.
At the same time,Affleck’s debut can also be identified as the beginning of the end of the Boston movie boom–– or at last the beginning of the backlash to its “grittiest” impulses. As Patrick Radden Keefe put it in a takedown of the film’s perceived excessesin Slate,“For much of the movie, half of Dorchester seems to be standing around outside their creaky wooden houses, just killing time…[Gone Baby Gone] is not so much what Mean Streets did for New York as what Deliverance did for Appalachia.”
The Town
The Town, directed by Ben Affleck, follows Doug MacRay, a skilled thief seeking a way out of his criminal life. The plot intensifies as a bank heist leads to a developing relationship between Doug and a kidnapped branch manager, risking exposure to an FBI agent pursuing his crew.
That kind of criticism didn’t stop Affleck from achieving a second critically and commercially triumphant Boston movie in 2010, withThe Town.One of the most enduring and iconic entries into the genre,the film stars Affleck himself as a Dorchester boy who gets embroiled in a bank heist by his hotheaded friend Jem (Jeremy Renner). Things really get complicated when he falls in love with the women they took hostage and then released.
WhileThe Townshares many of the same themes as Affleck’s debut,Gone Baby Gone,it adopts a lighter tone and touch with its bank-heist-thriller-cum-romance plot line.Because of this, the film has a winning, highly rewatchable quality that other, grimmer films in the genre sometimes lack.
Spotlight
Based on a true story, Spotlight is a drama film that tells the story of reporters who are privy to terrible details about goings on within the Roman Catholic Church. When several allegations are levied against the church, the Boston Globe sends out a team of reporters to investigate John Geoghan, who was accused of molesting several children. Believing there is a cover-up, the team goes to incredible lengths to find the truth and prove the guilt and complicity of both John and the church.
Spotlight, which won Best Picture, isless of a crime drama and more of a procedural thrillerin the style ofAll the President’s Men. The film is based on the true story ofThe Boston Globespotlight team’s investigation of child abuse in the Catholic Church’s Boston diocese.
Spotlightis far less violent than films likeThe Town, and far less graphic than films likeMystic River, making it more narratively conventional. Nevertheless, even on this more subdued aesthetic register,its twists and turns are understandably agonizingin their enormous implications for faith, power, and politics.
Shutter Island
Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island is based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and Ben Kingsley. Set in 1959, Shutter Island follows two U.S. Marshalls - Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) as they are sent to investigate the disappearance of a patient from a hospital specializing in psychiatric care.
Shutter Islandis rarely recognized as a Boston movie in the proper sense. This twisting psychological thriller, directed by Martin Scorsese, is nevertheless fundamentally tied to other films in the genre from its inception:It’s based on a novel by Dennis LeHane,who also wroteGone Baby Gone, Mystic River,andLive By Night(a Boston crime thriller set in the 1920s that Ben Affleck adapted in 2016).
Shot in Southeastern Massachusetts, the film is set on an island in Boston Harbor where a detective (Mark Ruffalo) is sent to investigate the disappearance of a fellow police officer.The film is satisfyingly mind-bending, and its star, Leonardo DiCaprio, is drawing on the same kind of style he employed inInceptionthat same year.This film’s ambitious scale, complex plot, and hallucinatory style make it highly unique among Boston movies.
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The Departed
The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese, depicts the tense interplay between the police and the Irish Mafia in South Boston. As an undercover officer infiltrates the criminal underworld, a syndicate informant rises within the police force, culminating in a high-stakes struggle to uncover the dual moles within their ranks.
The Boston movie wouldn’t be the same without Martin Scorsese’s triumphant, ribald, hard-boiled classicThe Departed.The film is most unanimously considered the peak of the subgenre andwon Best Picture and Best Director in 2006.
The Departedis eminently rewatchable and compulsively entertaining
Inspired by the life of mobster Whitey Bulger, the film is a winding tale of cops and robbers and honor among thieves. The lives of police detectives, politicians, and petty criminals overlap and blur in Whitey’s orbit, destroying lives, loves, and reputations in the process.The Departedfeatures one of Jack Nicholson’s most iconic performances as Bulger, and makes compelling use of many of the subgenre’s mainstays, including Damon andMark Wahlberg, whose performance is particularly memorable. LikeThe Town, The Departedis eminently rewatchable and compulsively entertaining, combining Scorsese’s masterful style with the narrative structure of a particularly good crime novel.
