Throughout my filmgoing life, one fact has held true no matter how much else has changed: I love crime movies. From the classic 70s genre flicks to the latest and greatest (which invariably copy those classic 70s genre flicks), I’m in heaven watching cops and robbers onscreen.

The best films in the genre number among my favorite films of all time — The Godfather, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Miller’s Crossing, Out of Sight and Miami Blues, to name a few. But even those that fall short of classic have littered my top ten lists for decades — films such as L.A. Confidential, Shaft, True Romance, The Usual Suspects, The Departed and Gone Baby Gone.

Add The Town to that second list, and add Ben Affleck to the list of directors who know how to knock this material out of the park. Affleck, long an unfairly maligned actor, has emerged as an expert director of modern film noir.

His first film, Gone Baby Gone, was a taut mystery set on the mean streets of Boston that concluded with a meaty moral dilemma. The Town, set on those same streets, is a more typical Hollywood movie, but it hits every pulpy beat with nuance and precision.

Based on a novel by Chuck Hogan and co-written by Affleck with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard, The Town follows a group of career bank robbers in Charlestown, Massachusetts (the bank robbery capital of the U.S., the opening titles inform us).

During the bank heist that opens the film, manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) is kidnapped and released. When the gang realizes she lives nearby (though she’s a “toonie” rather than a townie, meaning she’s a blue blood slumming it among the natives), they decide to track her to see what she knows. That job falls to Doug MacRay (Affleck), the criminal mastermind of the bunch, and (you can see where this is going) he winds up falling in love with her in the process. Meanwhile, hot on Doug’s trail is FBI agent Adam Frawley (John Hamm).

That’s the story in a nutshell, and you can probably guess almost every one of the film’s plot turns if you’re a fan of the genre. But that doesn’t matter — on the contrary, it’s half the fun.

Affleck stages this “one last job” thriller with grit and realism and just enough style. He pulls off three heist set pieces with action chops that put many more experienced directors to shame (Christopher Nolan could pick up a few pointers on how to stage an action scene). And he has cast the film perfectly and coaxed sterling performances from every one of his actors.

Jeremy Renner, fresh off his Oscar-nominated turn in The Hurt Locker, is menacing as Doug’s lifelong friend Jim, a loose cannon who takes everything one step too far to prove he’s badder than everybody else. Blake Lively (of TV’s Gossip Girl) disappears into her role as Jim’s drug-addled sister and Doug’s ex — she’s maybe a tad too beautiful for these streets but she’s completely believable. And Jon Hamm, who has done better work on Mad Men the past four years than any Best Actor Oscar winner during that span, shines as the G-Man who’s always one step behind the bad guys.

In brief but memorable supporting roles as the previous generation of crooks, Chris Cooper (as MacRay’s father) and Pete Postlethwaite (as the local crime boss) are wonderful as usual.

I liked that the FBI agents aren’t portrayed as bumbling or evil. Frawley and MacRay are just about evenly matched, and while your sympathies are designed to lie with Affleck’s character, you half want Frawley to get his man and you certainly don’t want him to die trying.

And while MacRay is the film’s protagonist, Affleck (as writer, director and actor) doesn’t mask his sinister side. He is a career crook, bound by the rules of his environment, and though he is looking for a way out he is still capable of serious violence. The character is given just enough poignant backstory to earn his shot at redemption, even as he makes increasingly poor decisions.

The Town, though familiar, is good enough to sneak into a 10-film Best Picture field. That prospect would thrill me, both as a fan of the genre and as somebody rooting for the resurrection of Ben Affleck’s career.

I love the idea of this guy (who I’ve found more appealing the more he’s been crapped on) becoming the next Clint Eastwood. Hell, he’s already made two Boston crime movies better than Mystic River.