Rebecca Hall, left, and Ben Affleck star in Affleck's new film, the crime thriller The Town. (Warner Bros.)

The opening titles for Ben Affleck’s The Town declare that the Boston neighbourhood of Charlestown has bred more bank and armoured car robbers than any other place in the U.S. To judge from this film, Charlestown is also the country’s beard-stubble capital. Maybe those robbers should consider holding up a Gillette truck for a change.

The Town skillfully navigates between visceral thrills and involving character drama.

This is what you notice in a movie theatre when you’re sitting two rows away from the screen. Not that I’m complaining, since the stubble in question peppers the sexy chins of Affleck and Jon Hamm, a.k.a. Mad Men retro hunk Don Draper. In this sleek, solidly acted drama, the two men share little in common besides their aversion to shaving. Hamm has a secondary role as a wily FBI agent, while director Affleck stars as a reluctant thief who becomes romantically involved with a witness to one of his crimes.

Affleck plays Doug MacRay, a Charlestown native who holds down what he describes as a Fred Flintstone day job at a gravel pit, but whose real money comes from that bank-and-armoured car business. He and his crew don Halloween costumes and pull off meticulously planned daylight robberies with the whirlwind violence of paratroopers storming an enemy compound. (Whatever happened to gentlemen bank robbers like George Clooney’s Jack Foley in Out of Sight, who could knock over a bank without using a gun?)

In the heat of their latest heist, Doug’s loose-cannon colleague, Jem (The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner), decides to take a hostage. They blindfold bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) and bundle her into their getaway van, eventually dropping her on the banks of the Charles River. When it turns out Claire is a Charlestown resident, Jem panics, afraid she might be able to identify them. Doug sets out to meet Claire and discover what she knows, only to fall in love with her.

The son of a career-criminal father (a defeated Chris Cooper), now spending time behind bars, Doug seems destined to follow in his old man’s footsteps. All his peers are thieves and he’s even had a kid with Jem’s skanky sister, Krista (Blake Lively), an OxyContin addict. Claire, however, gives him hope that he can make a fresh start. Sweet and gentle, she’s the kind of innately good person who spends her spare time volunteering with underprivileged children.

But as their relationship grows — Claire still blissfully unaware that Doug is one of the men who kidnapped her — outside forces threaten it. One of them is Frawley (Hamm), the tenacious federal agent bent on taking down Doug and his crew. Another is Fergie (Pete Postlethwaite), the local kingpin, who has lined up the gang’s latest and most audacious job — a raid on Boston’s holiest of holies, Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. A brutal Irishman whose quaint business front is a florist shop, Fergie has unpleasant ways of making Doug do the crime.

The Town is based on the Chuck Hogan novel Prince of Thieves, adapted for the screen by Peter Craig, Aaron Stockyard and Affleck. The actor, who made his well-received directing debut with Gone Baby Gone (2006), is an assured hand at the wheel. The Town skillfully navigates between visceral thrills and involving character drama in a way that seems especially adroit coming on the heels of last month’s bank-robbery flick, Takers. Where that movie’s attempts at character building were well-intentioned but clumsy, The Town shows us how it’s done.

It helps that Affleck has assembled a cracking good cast. Hall, in particular, is effective as Claire, a young woman left rattled and vulnerable after her abduction. Doug may be the central character, but she’s the innocent bystander most of us will identify with. As Jem, Renner combines the reckless bravado of his bomb-disposal expert in The Hurt Locker with the explosive temper of one of Joe Pesci’s Scorsese gangsters. Lively, of Gossip Girl fame, dresses down convincingly as Krista. And, as the vicious florist-cum-crime lord, Postlethwaite makes the mere act of clipping a rose stem look menacing.

Then there’s Hamm, tackling his first substantial movie role, at least in terms of screen time. His G-man is just a stock antagonist, but Hamm makes a tasty meal from that stock. Frawley is like Don Draper unleashed, barking orders at his inferiors, lobbing F-bombs, or smoothly manipulating the film’s female characters to get to his prey.

Perhaps inspired by his co-stars, Affleck gives one of his better performances of late. His charming, sensitive Doug is a romanticized criminal — as the title of Hogan’s novel suggests — but he plays him with feeling.

In his capacity as director and Bostonian, Affleck gives us a tour of his historic city via intense car chases and takes us into the guts of the legendary Fenway for the ballpark heist. There’s also a nod to Boston’s strong Roman Catholic roots — Doug and his crew pull off one of their jobs wearing seriously creepy nun masks, complete with flowing wimples. And the Boston-accent police will be happy to learn that all the actors manage to sound authentic without veering into parody à la Alec Baldwin in The Departed.

In the end, The Town may be pure Hollywood, but it’s Hollywood at its best. Arriving after three months of lumbering blockbusters, it sends a clear message: “Summer’s over — it’s time for the real films to begin.”

The Town opens Sept. 17.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.