The movie is the story of Bobby's passage from furious entitlement to grateful humility.
If you aren't
already there, The Company Men may well lower you into depression. A good
cast gives us the flavor of what the current meltdown means to second tier
executives who lose their jobs. These are men who have built their lives on the
upward trajectory of borrowed money. They have a lot of stuff and many
obligations.
Bobby Walker
(Ben Affleck) has a wife, two children, a big white house with a mortgage, a
Porsche, country club dues, and destination vacations. Wife Maggie (Rosemarie
DeWitt) recognizes and accepts the situation for what it is: it is serious, and
it may not be temporary. The movie is the story of Bobby's passage from furious
entitlement to grateful humility.
Lifted
straight from today's front pages, the movie raises issues that have become life
challenges for thousands of American families. Though Writer/Director John
Wells' upper management characters are not easy objects of sympathy, they are
symbols of the problems rippling outward from the financial collapse. Jim
Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) is the CEO whose job is to raise the share price of
the company so it will be a more attractive takeover target. He can sell a
division, sell advice, or fire top level people. He chooses layoffs while
pocketing 22 million himself.
Gene McClary
(Tommy Lee Jones) represents the company conscience. Chris Cooper is the 60-
something guy who has become invisible to employers. As Maggie's brother Jack,
Kevin Costner is a good contractor who actually makes a product. All of them,
except Jack, suffer the serial indignities of loss of lifestyle in middle age.
These men had done nothing wrong. They simply worked hard and spent their
rewards. Now they are in cubicles with telephones searching for jobs that no
longer exist. Hanging over the movie, as it does in reality, is the question of
whether the lost jobs will ever come back.
Another hot
button question comes at us through Tommy Lee Jones' Gene who co-founded - with
CEO Salinger - the original GTX as a ship building company that employed 6000
people making something "they could see, smell, and touch." Now the shipyard is
an abandoned wreck and GTX is a conglomerate in a skyscraper. Gene is haunted by
America's transformation into a culture that traffics in the arithmetic of
bankers, brokers, traders, and managers, a culture that values finance over
manufacturing. For years, the manufacturing Mid West has regarded the eastern
financiers as bookkeepers and dealmakers for the industrial giants. Deeply
resentful, their opinion of the East was: "They build nothing; they are
parasites." Now, with manufacturing outsourced, Wall Street is king.
It's hard to
care deeply about characters who are written as messengers of the issues; but
issues, not characters, are what this movie is about. After painting the
economic future as gravely uncertain, the filmmakers are unable to resist their
Hollywood roots. In a sudden and unfathomable twist, they coat their ending with
powdered sugar. Bad move.
Copyright (c) Illusion