Sometimes when I see a movie a second time, I see a little bit more. Sometimes it’s watching an alternate cut or something, but it can be as simple as watching the movie a second time and knowing how it’ll end the whole way through. So I thought I’d try something new. I’d make notes on what I thought of certain films when I saw them a second time – let’s call it a “re-view review”, eh? Maybe they’ll become a semi-regular fixture.
When I first caught The Town, I admitted to being a bit disappointed with it. It was a good film, but it wasn’t quite as consistently brilliant as many people had led to me to believe. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed it (get more of my thoughts on it by checking out the review) but it just seemed like something was missing from the film, even if I didn’t know what. So, when dad returned from the video shop with it on Friday, we all sat down to watch the special “extended cut” of Ben Affleck’s film. And I absolutely loved it.
Hamming it up a notch...
In the commentary, Affleck notes that he is prouder of the theatrical cut of the film. And, to be honest, I can understand why he might feel that way. It runs at two hours, covers a lot of material, but never really loses focus on its core cast. Extending a movie to a runtime of two-and-a-half hours is always a risky proposition, especially when your audience has already seen two hours of it.
However, I prefer the extended cut, if only because of what I like to term “the Heat factor”. Early in the film, you can catch a glimpse of Doug MacRay watching the classic Michael Mann movie on his couch. It’s the scene where the gang hopes to sell William Fitchner back his bonds, but which turns out to be an ambush. Anyway, back to the point – while Heat is a well-liked film, I’ll concede that I like far more than most. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that I love it. While others might describe the film as bloated or over-crowded, I love the sense of texture created with a full-formed professional ensemble on both sides of the law. You can’t say that Heat belongs to Robert DeNiro’s master thief, nor to Al Pacino’s dogged detective – the two of them share the film, both acting as protagonists and heroes in their own way.
It shouldn't be a hard cell?
As such, the extended cut of The Town adds a great deal of depth to the film. It’s not that the original was shallow or anything, but there’s a lot of little additions which add up to a much more. Affleck’s extended cut doesn’t just include whole new scenes, it includes small snippets of dialogue or characterisation cut into existing scenes. Sever scenes run longer than I remember, and the cast gets more all-round development. Certain additions (for example, Agent Frawley explaining that it’s standard operating procedure to close the bridges to Charlestown after robberies and Claire asking if she’s a suspect) help foreshadow and set up developments to come – it doesn’t seem like the movie is just adding hurdles for its cast later on. We see Doug relapse into his drug addiction and engage in some target practice, indicating that his actions at the film’s climax aren’t simply driven by a botched job – he’d quite probably planned them from his initial confrontation with the Florist.
Agent Frawley, as played by John Hamm, gets significant development in the alternative version. He’s more than simply a dickish police officer who flaunts his authority to catch the crooks. He spends some more time with Claire (including a brief flirtation – which is, of course, against the rules), setting up something of an interesting dynamic between himself and MacRay. This doesn’t make the movie a two-hander or anything as crazy, but it does create the impression that we’re getting a wider perspective of the story – the sequences involving law enforcement seem like actual elements of the plot, rather than filters for awkward exposition. Even little things, like Frawley worrying that someone might “interfere” with his food, tell us a lot more about the character than the original cut – and more Hamm is good Hamm.
It isn't black and white...
However, while the extended cut fleshes out the role of the FBI agent pursuing the bank robbers, it also serves to make Doug himself more morally ambiguous. It’s very strange to remark that a bank robbery in a film needs to be more morally ambiguous, but I had difficulty balancing the portrayal of the criminal community in Charlestown with the presentation of the police officers. The original cut of the film seems to argue that Doug MacRay is somehow a “better” person than those who pursue him – that, despite robbing banks, he’s a “good” guy who just had some hard knocks while the taskforce chasing him is a bunch of jerks.
Through the extended cut, Doug is faced with the consequences of his actions. The scene in which he threatens the drug dealers who intimidated Claire is just a little bit more intense this time – it’s more graphic. While we were undoubtedly supposed to be a little shocked by how far Doug went in the original version of the scene, here it’s made abundantly clear that he’s a man of violence. When Claire finds out about the beating of the two guys, she’s appalled – even as he argues that it’s “karma.” It’s an effective juxtaposition, and one which illustrates just how far astray Doug’s moral compass is (even if his heart is in the right place). Earlier on, he learns that one of his colleagues may have blinded a staff member during a bank robbery – something which illustrates the consequences that his actions can have on innocent by-standers. He’s the protagonist of the film, and we see things through his eyes, but he’s not a hero. The original version seemed to lose track of this in places.
"How come most of my scenes ended up in the Extended Cut?"
I think that I might come to love this film. I really liked the original version, but I think the extended cut just flowed so much better. If extended cuts of Ben Affleck movie have this effect on me, I really should get around to checking out that extended cut of Daredevil.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: al pacino, arts, ben affleck, boston, Federal Bureau of Investigation, films, heat, John Hamm, michael mann, Movies, re-view review, robert deniro, the town, Town |
the m0vie blog 
Very interesting. Thanks for describing the extended cut because it does seem like it adds an extra dimension to the characters. Indeed, one of the small beef I had with the movie (which I gave a B+ btw) was the fact that Doug just started to fire his weapon recklessly at the end which didn’t make sense with the rest of the movie. Great post Darren!
Thanks. I’m surprised how much I enjoyed the extended cut, especially since most seem to agree with Affleck that the lean theatrical cut was better.
Nice Review Darren.
Personally I prefer the theatrical cut. While I really did like the inclusion of the Bank Manager in the hospital things, I thought the new cut wrecked the pacing a bit.
For example I love the montage in the original were Frawley is narrating just how Doug and his crew are laundering the money and we get the montage of them doing each step. It Had a lot of visual pop and showed just how professional Doug was. Having a little scene for each step along the way felt unnecessary because it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before.
Also annoying the reinclusion of the love triangle aspect between Frawley, Doug and Claire. Only because I thought excising that whole tired subplot was one of the smartest things Affleck did in adapting the book from film. And even though the extended cut didn’t get tangled in it the way the book did, it was still annoying to see.
And I might be wrong but I was pretty sure the line about the bridge was in the OC as well.
Anyway either way it’s a great movie, I’m glad you liked it.
I only watched the theatrical version of “The Town”, and the extended version may have connected some of the dots, but that doesn’t mean that it was such a good movie, imho. It was very overrated. Claire was annoying as hell, Doug was a real sociopath who knew how to come across as a really sweet guy who’d do anything for (his) girl, but I just didn’t buy it. I’m sympathetic with the law enforcement people who were out to bring Doug MacRay and his crew to their knees. I wish to hell that Doug MacRay had been caught and sent back to jail for his crimes and that Claire had been criminally prosecuted herself, or at least put on some sort of probation for having lied to the Feds about her and Doug’s relationshiip until they were caught red-handed together through a recorded telephone call on the Feds’ end, for having tipped off Doug to the Feds when they were right on the verge of catching him and sending him to prison, and for receiving stolen goods.
I don’t know, I think Affleck did a good job keeping the film amoral. Doug does, after all, beat a bunch of kids to within an inch of their lives using baseballs bats to impress a girl he kidnapped. The audience never feels too much sympathy for him, but I think Affleck made him a compelling character. One of the reasons I like the extended version much better is because it extends the scenes featuring the law enforcement officers, and balances it out a bit. It doesn’t make the cops sympathetic (in fact, the opposite), but it does illustrate how completely crap the entire situation is, whcih makes Doug’s actions slightly more understandable.
To each their own, Darren, but, if the fact that Doug beats up a bunch of kids with baseball bats within inches of their lives to impress Claire is any indication, Doug really is an immoral person who is prone to unprovoked violence, like his father was, and like ‘Jem” was. I not only don’t have an ounce of sympathy for Doug (or Claire, for that matter), but Doug’s actions are not understandable, and inexcusable. It’s not as if he beat people up in self-defense. Beating up and/or killing people to avenge threats on his girlfriend or whoever is just plain revenge, not self-defense. Self-defense is one thing, but Doug goes too far, imho.
All of the above having been said, I really do sympathize, in this case, with FBI Agt. Frawley and the other law-enforcement Feds and officials who’re trying to bring Doug MacRay and his men to justice, by sending them to prison, where they belonged.
The Town, imo, glorifies the very worst, most mean-spirited aspects of Boston’s history by requiring that the audience root for Doug MacRay and his men even though they rob, assault and kill, and have mile-long criminal records, to boot, and to cheer them on when they outsmart the FBI Agt. who’s been assigned to bring them down.
The movie also requires the audience to root for and sympathize with Claire, who is turned into a naive naif or willfully ignorant patsy who pretty much sticks with Doug even after learning who he really is through FBI Agt. Frawley, and allows herself to be exploited and manipulated by him. The fact that Doug bought Claire an expensive diamond necklace for her with ill-gotten heist money beforehand, however, should’ve provided a hint to Claire who Doug really was and what he was up to. It’s highly unlikely that an average, ordinary white workingclass guy from Charlestown could afford a woman in his life something so expensive.
Doug skillfully came across as a nice guy, but he was really a sociopathic exploiter. He skipped town for Florida for two reasons:
A) Doug was on the lam from the law because he was an armed robber and wanted fugitive, and, a murderer, since he killed Rusty and Fergie for threatening Claire, plus he knew, at some level that he’d eventually be hunted down and caught (perhaps violently), gunned down by the law, or sent to prison, where he belonged.
B) Doug had also gotten what he really and truly wanted out of Claire; a promise that she wouldn’t turn him into the Feds, plus he left her money to have the hockey rink in C-Town for the kids in the area, because Doug couldn’t do it himself, since he was hiding out in Florida.
In short, Doug exploited Claire in order to cover his own butt and go scott free, which Claire, either naively or out of willful ignorance, allowed him to do.
That being said, there are, imo, three types of people who really liked The Town:
A) Very naive or willfully ignorant people, many of who’re not from the Boston area and aren’t aware of its history.
B) People who are from the Boston area and long for the days when Boston was at its most mean-spiritedness.
C) People who’ve had run-ins with law-enforcement officials themselves for whatever reasons and are therefore much more likely to root for and sympathize with Doug MacRay and his accomplices in crime, and for Claire, who became an accessory to Doug’s crimes when she refused to sever all contact with him after learning who he was (which she could’ve/should’ve gotten help from Agt. Frawley by doing), and when she tipped Doug off to the presence of Frawley and his men in her house, thereby enabling him to get away.
I’m not sure I’d agree with that logic. There is, after all, a long history of vaguely sympathetic criminal protagonists within the genre, and chosing to set the story in Boston makes sense given the statistical reality. I don’t, for example, consider In the Name of the Father or Patriot Games to be offensive to me as an Irish person because they portray Irish terrorists. I don’t deem The Guard to be an insensitive portrayal of Western Irelan (where I grew up) purely because it adheres to various genre conventions associated with Westerns (namely systemic corruption and impotence). I can’t find The Town to be an insult to Boston for the same reason – it adheres to the conventions of similar movies (in aprticular, the extended version is something of a spiritual successor to Heat), but does so in a smart and well-constructed manner.
.This is something that still continues to dog me, even though I’ve written about it so many times. Why, oh why do so many people fall for such a hyped-up, cheap, overrated, trashy movie such as The Town, and, more to the point, refuse to accept dissenting opinions on it? It beats me…I don’t know!
I admit to one thing, however: The Town had me rooting for the cops and the FBI, especially Agt. Adam Frawley and wanting them to catch Doug MacRay and his men and send them to jail for their crimes, and to have Claire either criminally prosecuted herself for being an accessory to Doug’s crimes and for tipping him Doug off with a “sunny days” code and enabling him to elude the law, or at least put on some sort of probation for her bullshit. Sure, I sympathized with Claire at first, because she was the victim of an armed bank robbery, which wasn’t her fault, but I completely lost my sympathy for her when she not only got involved, wholesale, in a romance with Doug, but refused to sever all contacts with him even after she learned through Agt. Frawley who Doug MacRay really was, and what he was up to.. Unlike most people, who are sympathetic with Ben Affleck’s character in that film, and with Claire, I am not.
Why should I be sympathetic to either Doug or Claire? The idea that Doug MacRay wanted to change and redeem himself through Claire is utter bullshit, especially after he engaged in an act of vigilantism by taking the law into his own hands, going back to Charlestown, and gunning down Rusty and Fergie just because they threatened Doug’s ladygirl Claire with physical harm. Come on now! Doug MacRay’s still a criminal and he was not the decent guy he came across as when he and Claire met “by chance” in a C-Town laundromat.
Doug MacRay, like his friends and partners in crime, are not only skilled, disciplined and ruthless in their quest for quick money through parasitic behaviors such as armed robbery, and who’d unquestionably kill or seriously injure people enough to put them in the hospital if they’re considered obstacles to what they want, but Doug knows how to come across as a nice guy, when he’s really not. He may not be crazy like his best friend and righthand man, Jem, but he’s a sociopath and a person of unprovoked violence just the same. The fact that he came across as such a nice, charming guy and deceived Claire by pretending to be an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, when he’s really not, is more than disgusting…it’s part of his criminal behavior. As for Claire, the fact that she took Doug’s bait and rose to it is pathetic indeed.
If Doug had really wanted to change, imo, he would’ve turned himself and his guys in, come forward, negociated with the Feds for some protection for him and Claire, and stopped robbing banks once and for all. Doug left for Florida without Claire for two reasons:
A) Doug macRay was an armed felon and wanted fugitive who’d been on the lam from the law for quite awhile, plus he’d just killed Fergie and Rusty.
B) Doug had gotten what he really wanted out of Claire all along; a promise from her not to turn him in, which he got.
How can so many people be so naive or willfully stupid as to miss that?
Also, if Doug wanted to redeem himself, he would’ve come forward, served his time, and, after a prison term, found honest ways to raise the funding for the renovation for the C-Town hockey rink himself, instead of using Claire Keesey as a go-between. What people don’t realize is that Doug wasn’t a nice guy…even to Claire, even though most people firmly believe that. The fact that he deceived her, seduced her and made a total fool out of her was vicious. The fact that Claire acted like a poor, confused, dumb-assed adolescent and allowed herself to be manipulated, made a fool out of and taken advantage of by Doug is pitiful, but she doesn’t deserve pity, due to the fact that she helped the very guy who turned her life upside down and caused her a ton of grief in the first place escape the law.
Now that I think of it, I wouldn’t cared one iota if Doug and Claire had either ended up in jail, or been shot and thrown into the Charles or the Mystic River. An awful thing for me to say, but that’s how disgusted I am with this kind of thing.
As for Kristina, well, I don’t like her sordid lifestyle or behavior (drug and alcohol addiction, sleeping around with too many men, and the fact that she was in the business herself by helping to book hotel rooms and get costumes for Doug and his men, and being a drug mule for Fergie and Rusty), but i’ll say this: I feel kind of sorry for Krista, in a way, because she had far fewer choices than Claire; she’d grown up with Doug and Jem, who, like many other men, abused and exploited her for their own ends. Krista’s daughter, Shyne, still an infant, caught in the middle of all this shit, was innocent, and I felt sorry for her, too.
I’m so sick of people saying that what the white collar criminals (not defending them, btw) are worse than guys like Doug MacRay and his gang, because it’s unrelated, and not true.
Neither the book Prince of Thieves, on which The Town was based, or the movie, make any effort to get at causes of bank robbery and other crimes, and the circumstances under which Doug and his men had grown up under. Moreover, the movie asks the audience to sympathize with Doug MacRay and his men, as well as Claire, who acted stupidly enough to allow Doug to take advantage of her, and who became an accessory to his crimes, while considering law enforcement officials assigned to bring criminals like MacRay and company to their knees and have them locked up in penetentiaries once and for all.
Dez was a smart (he was college-educated and had a regular job) but stupid guy; he was pretty much just along for the ride, and did what he was told to do by the gang, and yet, at the same time, he seemed to be pretty much their victim, as well, if one gets the drift. Dez allowed himself to be taken for a ride, also.
At least the book fleshes out the characters and spends more time on Dez and Krista, and doesn’t focus on the viewpoint of Doug and Jem so much, plus the book takes a far less sympathetic outlook towards Doug and his men.
Sorry, folks, but I can’t bring myself to like this film, except for the very beginning.
I also might add that The Town also normalizes the Stockholm Syndrome and its inverse, the Lima Syndrome. One doesn’t have to be in any of the helping professions (i. e. psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, etc.) to realize that, while a person who’s taken hostage and falls victim to the Stockholm Syndrome (i. e. falling in love with her captor) or the Lima Syndrome (i. e. accepting the overtures of her captor, who falls in love with her), presumably has a better chance of survival in a hostage situation, the victim, in either case, is turned into a person who is at her captor’s beck and call, is manipulated and controlled by him, and is essentially brainwashed into believing that her captor cares enough about her not to kill her, and that he’ll always treat her kindly and not abuse her. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, especially because, all too often, the victim is isolated from her friends and loved ones, and begins to blame law officials and other authorities for her troubles and turn against them rather than her captor who committed this criminal act against her in the first place.
That being said, I’d say that common sense is required, in order to at least minimize the possibility of having something like that happen to him or her; Just because one meets a charming guy or gal, doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily out for any good, particularly if one is in an area that’s known to be tough, with a violent history to it. Anybody who meets someone that they’ve never seen before, no matter where they are, or how charming they may be, should be much more careful, and not be so quick to accept dates with someone or get into things with people they don’t know that well.
Claire was a woman who used no common sense what. so. ever, and she ended up having a breakdown when it finally backfired on her. Hey…if I’d known her in real life, I’d tell her..”Hey..don’t you understand that if you play with fire, you’re going to get burned? Think about that!”
Supposed the bank manager hadn’t been as angelic-looking as Claire, or had been someone with a learning/developmental disability such as autism, Aspergers, dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, or a seizure disorder? Do people honestly believe that Doug and his men would’ve acted the least bit charming and sympathetic towards her? I don’t think so. Doug would’ve allowed Jem to do whatever he wanted with her, and she probably would’ve been gang-raped or “offed” by Doug and his posse of armed criminals. Don’t kid yourselves, guys!
Doug, contrary to how he came across to Claire, wasn’t a nice guy, even to her. He was playing her, and anybody who thinks that Doug and his men wouldn’t have killed her if she’d resisted and refused to comply with them is just kidding themselves.
I can see where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s as simple as you make it seem. I still think the scene where he beats a bunch of kids to within an inch of their lives with a baseball bat demonstrates that Doug… despite his own best intentions… isn’t the guy with the strongest moral compass. While he is sympathetic, I think that stems from the fact he tries to do the right thing, but often fails to identify the correct option, if it even exists. He makes decisions he has been conditioned to make, and the movie doesn’t pretend that they’re unequivacably correct. Even his interaction with the hostage is never anything less than highly suspect.
I certainly don’t see Doug as any more or less sympathetic than any most criminal protagonists in these kinds of films. His environment and upbringing don’t excuse his actions, but he’s interestign to watch because he seems incapable of making the morally correct decision, despite his best efforts.
Darren: I’ve seen “Name of the Father”, which I thought was a very good movie that was well done. Pete Postlethwaite was excellent in his role as Guiseppe Conlon, who died in a British prison, of TB. While ‘Name of the Father” was clearly about IRA figures and terrorists, it conveys a whole different message to me than “The Town”:
A) “Name of the Father” doesn’t glorify terrorism, but it makes the audience realize that people sometimes become radicalized enough to resort to terrorism when they’ve lost all hope and have become desperate.
B) The IRA people were fighting for real liberation, even though one may not agree with their tactics.
“The Town” on the other hand, imho, does glorify criminality and sends the message that people don’t have to be held accountable for their opinions, asks the audience to sympathize with Doug and his men, and for Claire, who was clearly an accessory to Doug’s crimes at that point, and to think that law enforcement people who are out to bring known criminals like Doug and his men down, are a bunch of malicious jerks.
I also might add that Claire had no business spending Doug’s blood money that he left for her on the renovation of the ice-hockey rink. She should’ve brought it to Agt. Frawley and arranged to turn Doug’s blood-stained money over to the authories, anonymously.
Claire was played and taken advantage of by Doug MacRay from the start, and an awful lot of people miss that.
I don’t know. As an Irish person, I’d have to disagree with that distinction about the IRA. They are precisely as legitimate as their loyalist counterparts, which is to say completely illegitimate. And I have a major issue with how they portray themselves abroad, fighting for “liberation.” Such an argument might have held sway in the early part of the twentieth century, but it certainly wasn’t valid from the late thirties onwards. Indeed, look at how much progress has been made in the fourteen years since they agreed to engage politically as opposed to the thirty-odd when they attacked and murdered civilians to further their ends. Choosing to kill based on an ideology that was a huge bone of contention among those living in the region doesn’t justify their actions any more than Doug stealing because he feels he has no choice.
That doesn’t make any of the films dealing with them bad films, even if it is sympathetic to them them as characters. (I would argue, independently, that some of the films dealing with them are bad films just because they’re bad films.)
Hi, Darren. Thank you for your input. I’ve enjoyed discussing The Town with you, even though we have differences in our viewpoints of it. I kind of see where you’re coming from also; it’s true that the kind of environmental and familial upbringing that Doug had, especially growing up in a household with criminals, contributed heavily to his crimes, how he responded to guys who were harassing Claire, and why he acted as he did overall. Nonetheless, however, it’s not countenanceable.
The Town conveys some troubling messages to me:
A) Acts of vigilantism which involve taking the law into one’s own hands and wantonly killing or seriously injuring other human beings simply because they either harassed or threatened one’s girlfriend or whoever, are okay, or understandable. When I think about this, I’m reminded of the incident where the father down in Texas beat up and instantly killed a guy who was sexually molesting his young daughter. Anger is understandable, and maybe roughing the guy up a bit might’ve been understandable, but this dad went way too far when he killed the guy. Sure, the guy who sexually molested this dad’s young daughter belongs in jail, but so does the young girl’s father.
B) That it’s okay for Claire to have made total dupes of FBI Agt. Frawley and his men (who’d been assigned to bring Doug MacRay and his men to justice and send them back to prison.) by obstructing justice and hampering the Feds’ doing their assigned job.
C) That crime is excusable, or understandable, if one can get away with it.
No worries. Glad that you’re enjoying it – I can see where you’re coming from, and I can respect that position. I would, however, respectfully disagree with a.) – I took the beating to be a sign of just how warped Doug’s morals were. I can, of course, only speak for my own experience, but I don’t think anybody watching the film with me (either at home or in the cinema), took that as a particularly impressive moment for Doug. I winced. My better half averted her eyes. At home, Mom jumped – assuming it would be a quite talking to he’d be giving. My fathe,r if I remember correctly, even uttered “Jesus” at the brutality of it.
But I can see your point. Thanks for being so civil about it, and also taking the time to clarify, respond, engage and discuss. I think those are the kinda things that are too often missing in internet discussion – it’s alway “I’m right and everybody else is wrong!” as opposed to “well, here’s how I see it, and why…” I appreciate very much the way you share and articulate your views, even though we do disagree to an extent.
(Apologies about the delay in responding. Work has been busy and, as you probably guessed, I tend to schedule posts way in advance to keep up.)
Hi, Darren.
Thanks again for your reply to my post, and for seeing my point of view. I also see where you’re coming from on this one. The fact that Doug’s morals were as warped as they are indicates what kind of a guy Doug really is…a guy with no (real) conscience or common decency. What I find scary about a guy like Doug (even though he’s a fictional character) is the fact that he comes across as a decent guy, when he’s really not, and his deceptive behavior towards Claire and the exploitive relationship that developed between them (however brief), strongly indicates that. What I also find troubling is the fact that so many people, both on and off-line (in real life), justify the beating that Doug gave to the guys in the project, and the fact that he killed Fergie and Rusty just for threatening Claire.
The fact that Doug purchased an expensive diamond necklace for Claire was another example of Doug’s deceptive behavior towards Claire, who should’ve been able to see Doug’s purchase of such an expensive gift for her as a hint of who Doug was and what he was really up to. The vast majority of men, particularly those from a background like Doug MacRay’s, don’t make the kind of money that affords then the ability to purchase an expensive diamond necklace for any woman in his life.
The fact that civility and decency clearly are missing on most internet discussions is due to the fact that the internet provides a certain amount of anonyminity, which emboldens a great many people (though certain not all) to say things to other internet posters that they’d be too scared to say to their face in real life, for fear of getting into trouble of some sort or other.
It’s okay to disagree, Darren. Thanks very much for your civility and your input. As always, I like to read your posts and I like exchanging ideas with you. Different things are viewed in different ways by different people.
I figured that you were busy, which was why you were late in replying to my post.
I also might add, Darren, that Doug MacRay and his men didn’t just simply have warped morals; they were professional criminals, who were armed robbers and thugs, whose identify was known to the FBI as well as The Town, in general and were wanted fugitives, but no evidence, let alone any convictions could be obtain due to The Town’s vicious code of silence.
As for distinctions about the IRA, I’m in no way legitimizing them, but I think that, unlike Doug MacRay and his posse of armed robbers, the IRA came into being as a result of the oppression of one country by another (even though one is fiction-(Doug MacRay and his men) and the other exists in real life (i. e. the IRA). Correct me if I’m wrong.