ICE is this your doing? LOL
Movie review
Movie review
'Company Men' delivers economics lesson that feels real
Jan. 19, 2011 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News) -- The Great Recession may be the talk of Main Street and Wall Street but Hollywood has been strangely mute.
Sure, there've been a couple of features, such as Up in the Air and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, but they centered more on the high-fliers who tell others to clean out their desks and be out by 5 p.m. As well, there've been documentaries like Inside Job, but they receive limited exposure. It was starting to seem as if not until houses start getting foreclosed on in Narnia would the economic reality of what's going on really make it to the big screen.
Enter writer/director John Wells, best known as a producer on such topic-heavy TV shows as The West Wing, ER, and Southland. For his feature-film debut, he has made The Company Men, an affecting, keenly observed tale of what happens to three executives who unexpectedly find themselves on the business end of the corporate cost-cutting ax.
But The Company Men is not just about the sudden slip in income; it's also about male identity, middle-age angst and making the job the focus of one's life.
Ben Affleck is Bobby Walker, a cocky, high-fiving, midlevel young sales exec at the fictional GTX corporation (OTCBB:GTXO) with a house in the 'burbs and a fast car in the driveway. He's the first to get the bad news, although he is too ashamed to admit it to anyone, especially his blue-collar brother-in-law (Kevin Costner), who is always busting his chops about GTX shipping jobs overseas.
He is confident that he will land on his feet quickly, before anyone notices that he has had a financial stumble. But as the days of enforced leisure and fruitless interviews drag into weeks, he finds himself teetering between denial and despair.
Also on the outs are Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper), who is close to retirement but can't afford it, and Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones), one of the corporate big shots whose position didn't inoculate him from downsizing.
Granted, some may feel a sense of schadenfreude seeing these three careerists get theirs. No doubt, these guys probably lost little sleep when those at the bottom of the GTX food chain were forced out. But it is to Wells' credit that he pushes beyond the stereotypes to make these characters real and sympathetic. It also helps that Affleck (much more believable here as a distressed yuppie than as a working-class hood in The Town), Jones and especially Cooper invest these men with a well-grounded sense of humanity.
By focusing on upper-class white men, The Company Men certainly doesn't speak to everyone's experiences in this troubled economy. But it's a start.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com.
Market Data 
Markets 
