The Green Lantern Corps is an intergalactic police force that utilizes the green energy of Will and serving is considered an extraordinary honor. The universe, we learn, is split into 3600 sectors  and the Green Lantern who is assigned to our little galaxy has a disastrous encounter with the evil creature Parallax and it's his ring that selects ne'er-do-well test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) as the next Green Lantern.

Jordan is a cocky daredevil in the Top Gun vein, but he runs from difficult situations, including his unresolved emotions about the death of his fearless and beloved test pilot father. His on-again, off-again girlfriend is Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), daughter of Ferris Aircraft president Carl (Jay O. Sanders) and a superb test pilot in her own right.

Meanwhile, back in Green Lantern intergalactic headquarters, Sinestro (Mark Strong) leads the Corps and debates the threat of Parallax (who is powered by "yellow fear" rather than "green will" energy) with the council of Guardians, an immortal circle of wise puppets who look like rejects from E.T.'s prop department. Sinestro doesn't believe humans are good enough to be in the Corps and tells Jordan quite bluntly on their first meeting, in what was intended to pass as some sort of interpersonal tension.

If you guess that Parallax is the evil bad guy creature that the Corps can't stop but new Green Lantern Hal Jordan can because of his new-found courage, you'd be right. But it's all so extraordinarily predictable that's not a spoiler, just a statement of the obvious. And that's the core problem with Green Lantern, that the story is so asinine, so rife with cliches that it was boring and completely unengaging, a factor exacerbated by the fact that the majority of the special effects look like they were done for a high-budget kids cartoon, not a full-blown big screen flick. My advice is for you to skip it, this'll be on TV soon enough.

The film opens up with a bank robbery, and it's clear immediately that this isn't a suave, sophisticated gang of thieves who are going to charm their victims, but a tough band of thugs who use physical force and intimidation to frighten them. Affleck plays disaffected criminal Doug MacRay, a lifelong Charlestown (Boston) resident who commits heists with his dangerously violent brother James (Jeremy Renner).

The bank robbery doesn't transpire as planned and they grab bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) and use her as a hostage to guarantee a smooth getaway. On Doug's urging, they release her unharmed and when FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) later interviews her, he's suspicious. But can Claire identify the robbers? That's the central question in the film, and Doug begins stalking her -- and then dating her -- to ensure she doesn't rat them out. Add in the "one more job" trope and you've got The Town.

Even with the occasionally ragged storyline, the action was exciting, the dialog gritty, vulgar and believable, the film reeked of verisimilitude, the performances were all spot-on, and the exterior shots of Boston were terrific. I really enjoyed The Town and anticipate Affleck becoming a reliable director of great films, much as Clint Eastwood has transformed his career and become one of the top directors in Hollywood. In a nutshell: go see The Town. You won't regret it.