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By Mark D, January 10, 2012 4:34 pm

I take a look at the Civil War Card Game Rebs & Yanks

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By Mark D, April 19, 2011 3:15 pm

I really can’t believe this movie. It has had awards poured on it, praise poured onto Ben Affleck, and Rotten Tomato has it pegged at 94%. I think there’s something about a combination of Boston crime, pseudo tragedy and Ben Affleck that distracts people from the huge gaping holes in the plot. I guess if you can create great action scenes, everything else will be overlooked. Just in case you haven’t seen the movie yet, there are probably going to be spoilers.

Affleck and his crew (3 other guys who you learn almost nothing about) are some of the best at robbing Armored Cars and banks. Now one problem is that your never informed how long they’ve been hitting armored cars or banks, but it sounds like most of their life. Yet they have only gotten the interest of the FBI following their latest heist. During that heist they also take a female hostage. It becomes Affleck’s responsibility to check what she knows, especially since she lives in the same town (Charlestown). He ends up falling for her and eventually decides that he wants out of the life of crime.

During all of this you find out Affleck is a criminal with a heart of gold. While his main partner Gem tends to go a bit over the top, Affleck is always telling them to just shoot out the engine blocks and to not actually hurt anyone. Irony being that in reality bullets go through a car like a hot knife through butter. So if a single bullet misses the engine block its probably going to hurt someone. It ends up Affleck’s mom left when he was young, and his dad ended up going to prison for a long time because he protected the big wigs in town. But all of Charlestown stands up for each other and sticks together like a tight knit family. Affleck moved in with Jem’s family who helped raise him. Eventually he even had a kid with Jem’s alcoholic sister.

The new girlfriend though is someone from out of town. When Affleck tries to leave, he is informed that she will be hurt if he doesn’t do one last job, knocking off Fenway Park after a weekend series with the Yanks. Unfortunately the FBI finds out and locks down the stadium before they get away. In the ensuing mess, two of Affleck’s partners are killed in gun battles. Affleck and Gem try to get away in Boston PD outfits. While Affleck gets away, Gem gets spotted and dies in a shootout. When Affleck returns to run away with his new girlfriend, he spots FBI waiting for him. So he decides to run by himself, leaving her a note and money. At the end you see Affleck in a nice little house in the south somewhere.

So my annoyance here? Affleck who is supposed to be this “good guy” in this tough town that forces him to crime, turns his back on everyone for a single female he knows for at most a few weeks. The Town that helped raise him, the family that took him in, his friends who put their lives on the line, his own daughter, they all mean nothing in retrospect to this new girl he met. Everyone important dies because of him. As much as we are to believe he’s this good guy, he’s also a hardened criminal whose been committing crimes for who knows how long. Are we to believe that this is the first time him and his boys have ever hurt someone?

Affleck should have died at the end of the movie, going out in a blaze with his friends. It’s almost as though his thought was “Why did I have to die at the end of Departed? I killed Jack Nichaulson!” without realizing that he needed to repent for his other crimes. Affleck should have never survived the final shootout with the cops, it would have been justice if he died. Instead he escapes, abandons everything he knows for a chick he just met a few weeks ago. It’s the most ridiculous ending possible and runs against the logic of the movie. We’re forcefed time and time again how important family and other people of the Town are. Hell, he mentions multiple times to the FBI that kids in the Town have ID’ed the Feds to his crew. The only way he gets away with these crimes is because of the people in the Town. But he turns his back on all that for a woman. I can’t believe this movie got as much high praise as it did.