At this point, I no longer visualize The Town as a movie, but as a story.
Doug MacRay and his men are lifelong Charlestown Townies, who, under Charlestown’s crime boss, Fergie, who runs a flower shop as a front for his criminal enterprise, are working for him, robbing banks and armored cars. Except for Desmond Elden, the youngest of the four, who has a fulltime, regular job with the telephone company, Doug and his men have extensive criminal records of grand theft, assault and murder. One warm, sunny late-spring morning, after lying in wait for the bank employees to cone and open the Cambridge Savings Bank, at around 8:00 a. m., after lurking in the vestibule overnight and putting on their disguises, they decide to go to work. After deliberately bumping into the cash-car driver to startle him, Doug and his men storm the bank, dressed as grim reapers, with long black capes and scary-looking ghoul masks with their automatic weapons drawn, forcing bank employees and customers alike to the floor. Everybody is threateningly warned by Jem, the nastiest and craziest of the four bandits, not to look up for even a second. Doug and his men seek out the attractive bank manager, a woman in her late 20’s, and force her to open the vault at gunpoint, which she nervously does after Doug calms her down. Doug and his men then take all the money from the vault and the cash drawers, being careful to avoid any dye-packs, which could unexpectedly explode and give them away.
Doug, Jem, Gloansy and Dez are about to escape with their loot when Claire, the bank manager, kicks the vault alarm with her foot, setting it off immediately. Then things go from bad to worse. Amanda, an equally attractive female customer in her mid 30’s, who is an artist, paramedic and martial artist, and her boyfriend, Dave, a construction worker, also in his mid-30’s, have been waiting in line to deposit some money through a teller, when they, too are somewhat roughly forced to the floor by Doug MacRay and his men. Despite having been warned by Jem to stay down on the floor and not look up, Amanda’s boyfriend, Dave, makes the mistake of looking up for a split second when the alarm goes off. That’s enough to send Jem (who’s Doug’s best friend and righthand man and the craziest, most hot-tempered of the four.) into an uncontrollable rage. Thinking that Amanda’s boyfriend, Dave, had set off the vault alarm, Jem attacks Dave in a fury, hitting him directly in the back of the head with the butt of his automatic weapon a half dozen times, as hard as he can, before Doug can stop him. Much blood flows from Dave’s head, and Dave is ultimately killed by the blows, as we shall see. Upon a paramedic’s instincts, Amanda attempts to find a pulse in Dave, but is unable to. She immediately realizes the worst.