Set for a NEW RIDE

The coming weeks will tell whether Affleck has rung the bell again,by working for the first time since then as both actor and filmmaker in a project specifically meant to show what he can do.

Affleck will introduce The Town,an ambitious heist film,which he has not only written and directed but also acted in with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard,at the Venice Film Festival and Toronto Film Festival gala.

And it is clearly meant to refocus a career that has bounced from roles in action thrillers like Armageddon to bit parts in indie romps like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back through the on-screen embarrassment of Gigli to acclaim for directing Gone Baby Gone. All without delivering what Good Will Hunting seemed to promise: that rare actor with skills enough to create his own showcase.

Its hard to disavow a movie when youve written,directed and acted in it, Affleck said in a telephone interview,while describing The Town as a bid to find his place in an industry that hasnt quite known what to do with him. He added,This is an emblem of the person I want to be going forward.

Affleck began hearing that Warner executives wanted him to become involved with The Town after the release of Gone Baby Gone,a critical success for which he was the director and a writer,and in which his younger brother,Casey,starred. It took in about 20 million at the box office for Miramax Films in 2007.

The Town,based on Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves,tells a story about crime and family in Charlestown,a Boston neighborhood that has spawned an extraordinary number of bank robberies and armoured-car holdups.

Affleck said he was initially wary,partly because another director,Adrian Lyne,had been trying to make the film and partly because he feared becoming too closely identified with stories rooted in the blue-collar environs of Boston,where both Gone Baby Gone and Good Will Hunting are set.

But Warner remained cool to Lynes version,which was lengthy and heavily focused on its love story,and he dropped out. Affleck said he was not only entranced by the possibilities in a story that would take him back to Boston,near where he grew up,but he also saw a rare chance to reboot himself as both actor and filmmaker.

Affleck slipped naturally into the lead role as Doug McCray,a professional criminal caught between his relationship with an accomplice,played by Jeremy Renner,and his love for a witness to one of their crimes,played by Rebecca Hall.

Affleck,who was raised in a generally law-abiding neighborhood full of police officers and firefighters,said he grounded his film in the accounts of felons,some of whom worked on the movie,often in bit parts.

Insuring the ex-convicts,he said,was a problem. Even more difficult was persuading parole officers to let his consultants handle guns even fake ones in scenes.

Sometimes we were successful,sometimes we werent, he said.

For the finale,the production spent 11 days in and around Fenway Park,but only after Major League Baseball was cajoled into putting aside its usual reluctance to cooperate with a film that is rated R,this time for violence,language,sexuality and drug use. But authenticity had become a fetish,if only because Affleck left himself nowhere to hide. Its all in for me, he said of his commitment to The Town

If it felt fake,I knew Id feel like an imposter the whole time.

Michael Cieply