For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - The Company Men
The Impression:
John Wells was one of the creators of ER a show I
loved dearly for many a season and the cast is just stacked
with the great actors of our time (Chris Cooper, Ben
Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, etc). Red flags abound though as
the trailer for the film was a generic sapfest and its
unceremonial early January jettisoning bodes more than
badly.
The Reality:
The Company Men isn’t a bad film. With this sort of
cast and this sort of Hollywood heavyweight behind the
director’s chair, to make it a bad film would be an
exceptional amount of effort. The performances are strong
(Ben Affleck plays beaten-down rich kid like no other), the
script though clichéd not painfully so, and the direction
is, well, better than average. What drags a solid red line
through The Company Men though is the subject matter.
The film deals with the idea of how recession effects
everyone, but focuses mainly on the laying off of a handful
of corporate higher-ups and the way in which it affects
their personal lives. At its heart the film asks of the
viewer to actually give a shit about how hard it is for
exceptionally wealthy individuals to have to eat a fine
helping of crow and not be exceptionally rich anymore. I
can’t imagine whom John Wells was intending as his audience
for this film, but the idea that anyone would care about the
tough times of a bunch of corporate assholes seems at best
laughable.
The Lesson:
If we’re talking about corporate America we need to be
puncturing their bloated self-images, not attempting to
create sympathy for their much-needed downfall.
- Noah Sanders
-
Unless
otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any
related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by
John Laird under a
Creative Commons License.
