The 2010 Boston heist thriller, which earned Jeremy Renner an Oscar nomination and still holds a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score, has three weeks left on the platform before it disappears domestically.
Ben Affleck's breakout directorial effort has a departure date. The Town, his 2010 heist thriller set in Boston's Charlestown neighbourhood, comes off HBO Max in the US on November 1, according to Collider. If you've been meaning to revisit it, this is the month.
Affleck directed and starred as a bank robber who falls for a hostage while planning one last job, a premise that owes a clear debt to Michael Mann's Heat with a dash of The Departed's Boston grime thrown in. It was his first major studio feature as a director, and it worked well enough to set up Argo a couple of years later, the film that eventually won him the Best Picture Oscar.
The cast is stacked by any standard. Rebecca Hall, Blake Lively, Jon Hamm and Titus Welliver all show up, and Jeremy Renner plays the volatile crew member whose performance landed him an Oscar nomination, his second in as many years after The Hurt Locker. The film holds a Certified Fresh 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critical consensus calls it "tense, smartly written, and wonderfully cast" and names Affleck "a director to be reckoned with," per the aggregator's summary cited by Collider.
The numbers back up the reputation too. The Town was made on a reported budget of $37 million and pulled in close to $155 million worldwide, a solid multiple for a mid-budget crime drama with no franchise backing.
Why the timing matters
Affleck isn't exactly idle right now. His new Netflix original, Animals, is dropping this week, which makes The Town's exit feel less like a quiet library clean-up and more like a reminder of where his directing career actually started. Welliver, meanwhile, has had a busy stretch of his own. Beyond The Town, he and Affleck go back through Gone Baby Gone, Live By Night and Argo. Welliver has since kept himself firmly in crime-drama territory, reprising his Harry Bosch role in the spin-off Ballard, popping up in MGM+'s The Westies, joining the cast of Dark Winds, and lining up an appearance in the final season of HBO's The Night Agent.
Collider also noted that Welliver has made encouraging comments about Bosch's future, though nothing concrete has been confirmed on that front yet. Worth watching, but separate from The Town's streaming clock.
For now, the practical bit is simple. If The Town isn't already on your watchlist, HBO Max has given you until the end of the month. After November 1, domestic subscribers will need to look elsewhere, whether that's a rental or a physical copy, to catch Affleck's Charlestown crew pull off their last job.
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