This film seems to be getting mixed reviews at best. It wasn't even released nationwide, or at least not at a theater near me, and very little promotion was given to it. I think that's a shame because it's an enjoyable film that actually explores not just the recent economy and downsizing in Corporate America but the North American situation (obsession with property, possessions and passing pleasures rather than true happiness). That said, I understand that films involving the recent economy haven't done well and I can see why many people wouldn't be eager to get out only to sit in a theater and watch what can be seen as a very depressing story that has a lot of truth to it.Outside of that fact I still say this is a good film if not entirely great. Ben Affleck is well cast and likable as a man who has it all until his company is hurt by the economy and he finds himself included in the list of recent layoffs, the last thing he expected given his position at the company. He is eager to find a new job and believes he'll have no problem given his credentials but he soon finds the only positions he can attain are those that he considers beneath him. Soon his termination package runs out and he and his wife (excellently played by Rosemarie Dewitt) have to face some realities about their nice house and many possessions including a beautiful sports car. Dewitt and Affleck do a great job of playing a couple under a lot of stress who still clearly love each other.
The film isn't as depressing as it sounds based on that synopsis, from there Ben Affleck's character slowly realizes that when all else fades family remains constant and his parents and brother in law (Kevin Costner) help him make it through to the other side.
While this goes on Tommy Lee Jones plays a higher business executive at the same company who is very upset with the way the company is being run. When he is eventually let go despite suggestions that could help the company he finds himself dissatisfied with his life and looking to find new meaning. Craig T. Nelson plays the head of the company who causes more issues by taking jobs out of the industrial end of the company to keep investors happy. Chris Cooper does an excellent job playing a man in the same position as Affleck only with much less fortunate results when he doesn't have the same support group (truly the most tragic aspect of the film).
Economy films are a lot like films about the Iraq war, not many want to hear anymore about these issues with the media already bombarding us. However, I would say this isn't so much an economy film as it is a film about a very specific aspect of the current human condition that just happens to use the recent economy issues as a starting point (much like how The Hurt Locker wasn't specifically about Iraq).
To me the film wasn't as depressing as others are painting it to be because the message wasn't about how bad things can get, it was about how good we can make things. Everything is a choice, if we stop becoming obsessed with things we have no control over in hopes of stability, if we stop building things up and acting as if they can never fall down, if we accept that nothing is permanent other than the happiness we give ourselves then we might move past all this and be in a better place, a place that can't be taken away from us.
The ending keeps it from being a truly great film, leaving things wrapped up almost too neatly too suddenly despite attempting to be openended and leaving Affleck's character with a mountain to climb. Still, if you liked last year's Up In The Air you'll enjoy this and if your interested in how business's wind up in trouble or if you like films that show the strength of family then this may be for you, give it a try. I hope this film finds a larger audience on Blu-Ray and DVD, I will certainly be adding it to my collection for repeat viewings.
* I hope this release has a director's commentary.
One of the men who is laid off is in his thirties (Ben Affleck); the other is twenty years older (Chris Cooper). Another (Tommy Lee Jones) roomed in college with the CEO and helped him build the company from the ground up, concentrating on shipbuilding in the Boston area. All three men live lavishly, with fancy houses, furnishings, and cars.
Affleck is great as the proud, bitter, and then humbled white-collar executive, who has to sell his million-dollar home (in the depressed housing market) and Porsche, and then move in with his parents and work for his brother-in-law (played nicely by Kevin Costner) constructing someone else's mega-house. Cooper is also good--downtrodden and desperate, forced to dye his hair, and grovel at job interviews and with associates. And Jones is wonderful--a man with a conscience in the business world, who cares about the people who work at GTX. He also starts to reevaluate his life, both professionally and personally, in middle age.
The film--written and directed by John Wells--hits home. Most of us know people like the ones we see in The Company Men. They can be vain, pushy, and full of themselves; but when things don't go their way, they can be depressed and helpless. Yes, people need to make a living, but they also need to think about what's really important--family, friends, and self-fulfillment. This is a film that makes you think about these things."The Company Men" is a sober telling of life within a modern company. Men come to be defined by their jobs and when the job is taken away from them, they are lost. Their world as they understand it simply collapses.
At a high level, "The Company Men" covers the lives of several executives of the ship building division of GTX Corporation, an American conglomerate. Profitability and growth seems to be eluding the division and the only response of management is downsizing and, when this fails, more downsizing. Each man is thrown into a whirlpool. Their lives of debt and over-consumption come to a screeching halt. If there is one message from this film it is that too many people assume that things won't change. Too little attention is paid to saving for a rainy day. Consumption is king.
There are excellent performances by Tommy Lee Jones and Ben Affleck. Both end up being "let go" and both struggle with the consequences. However, eventually, reality must be faced. This is not an easy row to hoe. In the case of Ben Affleck's character, his life style is forced to undergo big changes. His house is sold, his family moves back to living with his parents, his wife gets a part time job and he takes a job of manual labour from his brother in law.
Without spoiling the plot, there is a somewhat happier ending. However, in the meantime, the film gives an excellent portrayal of so much of modern corporate life. It's a dog eat dog world out there. Just remember that change can be forced on anyone.
Read Best Reviews of Company Men (2010) Here
Mild "spoilers" contained herein:A decent, well-paced but largely predictable movie showing what a few "downsized" employees at a large corporation go through when the rug is yanked from under them. Unless you were living in a convent for the last 3 years, none of what you see here will be particularly surprising. The makers of the film dutifully present the greedy heartless CEO (Craig T. Nelson), the hot-shot MBA (Ben Affleck), the blue collar heart-of-gold guy (Kevin Costner), the overlooked company lifer (Chris Cooper), and so on. All the actors do a great job, including the always-good Tommy Lee Jones as the disillusioned philandering millionaire, but there's not really a tremendous amount of meat on the bones of this movie. The actors are attempting to give life to thinly-drawn caricatures distilled from the headlines.
In the end, I don't really care too much about anybody, partly because their troubles are not my own (I've got it worse than everyone shown in the movie), but largely because so many character development questions are left unanswered:
Chris Cooper's character is 60: why is losing his job so devastating? How long did he plan to work? Wouldn't he be close to retirement with some money saved up?
Ben Affleck's character is devastated to lose his Porsche and his country club membership. Why? In his parents' house again after selling his house, he tells his wife "I couldn't wait to get out of here. I was gonna be a CEO." That's it? That's all you got? His parents seem like nice folks. Where's the motivation? Why should we care about this corporate wanker?
It's hard not to be sympathetic with any character Tommy Lee Jones plays, but he stands idly by for most of the movie as the company he helped build is taken away from him, and as people he cares about gets fired, and as he himself gets fired, as he has an affair with the H.R. department chick, walks out on his wife, he sits on a giant pile of money and doesn't help anyone... what happens at the end doesn't redeem him, especially considering the speech he gives to Affleck about loving hotel suites and expensive meals.
Craig T. Nelson's CEO is one-dimensional... it could have been interesting to get under his skin, but the movie didn't have time for him.
And really: do they HAVE to show the passage of time through the cliched use of holidays? Halloween, Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas trees, working on New Year's Eve, Easter egg hunts are all shown.... the only thing missing is the last scene happening on 4th of July.
And so on.
Rosemarie Dewitt gives a good performance as Affleck's wife, and Maria Bello does the best she can with the H.R. character.
Comparisons are being made to "Up in the Air", however, "The Company Men" is more relentlessly bleak and conventional, and has far less snappy dialogue. Affleck's excellent kiss-off to one potential employer, and a couple of exchanges at the employment agency are the only thing bordering on funny.
As a distillation of the business headlines from 2008-2010 and how it plays out in a few lives, this is a very good film, and probably all it aspired to be. As a compelling, moving work of cinema... not so much. 3-1/2 stars.
Want Company Men (2010) Discount?
THE COMPANY MEN (2010, but not released until 2011, 105 minutes, do not confuse with the other comedy Company Man [HD], see my review or with Company Man [HD]) is probably one of the most important movies of this era. In the near future I wager it will be considered a downright unequalled classic. I cannot say I feel that way about it now ... but it has a vital symbolism that I would not have wanted to miss. What attracts my curiosity is why this film seems to have been buried and ignored.Corporate monster GTX, based in Gloucester, Massachusetts and responsible for the rape of New England, is downsizing suddenly and savagely. The depression we keep pretending is a recession is hitting hard and fast. Ben Affleck, who does not deserve the top billing or any special attention yet receives it, portrays the young sales manager who is fired. In a way, we see this mostly through his eyes as he descends the levels of the Hell of Job Loss.
Tommy Lee Jones and Craig T. Nelson portray the corporate bigwigs of GTX, though Nelson is the soulless owner while Jones is just his 'partner' going back to the company's beginnings. Jones worries like an old lady about the employees being fired while Nelson laughs. Soon Jones is fired, along with Chris Cooper, who symbolizes the too-old-to-hire, out-of-work corporate 'wise man'. It is only Cooper's character who meets his appointment with death by his own hand, and I can't say I liked that but I knew someone had to commit suicide in this.
In a way, this film treats with a world I know not. It is not familiar to me, nor is it understandable. I know such men as "corporate monsters" or the less offensive "bigwigs", "stiff suits" and my own term "executroids". Tommy Lee Jones' character admits who he is: "Hell I like $500 lunches and $5,000 hotel suites!", and this after he's been fired and is a bit hopeless.
Guess that is the real 'enterprising spirit'. That is the world I will never, ever understand. My father always always said, "We're all the same, and everyone's just trying to make a living." So I tried to look at it like that and I have my father to thank for my being able to appreciate this film in full. Before thinking of Pop's wise observation, all I could see was the leering, nasty faces of Craig T. Nelson on one side and Ben Affleck on the other.
There is lots to see and hear in this film. While I felt a kind of sad disgust with it at first, I warmed to its importance. This film speaks loudly to anyone, everyone, who has ever struggled on the way up, lost a job or is floundering in a jobless economy. A special appearance by Kevin Costner as Affleck's brother-in-law symbolizes hard-working labor. As owner of a mid-level construction company, he takes pity on Affleck and hires him. What I really liked here is Costner's job is to build modest homes.
The shots are crabbed and claustrophobic yet lovely and meaningful: the multi-million dollar houses representing the mortgage crisis ('McMansions'), with FOR-SALE signs in the front yards. The shots of certain desolate parts of Gloucester, including the dead, boatless harbor. This has meaning since Jones' character began as a shipwright as did Cooper.
In fact the character with the least meaning (for me, anyhow) is Affleck; he represents the resentful, young hard worker who fought his way out of a working-class neighborhood he despised, and really believed he was better than everyone else. Sad.
As my father might have asked, who is responsible for what? Who cheated the worker out of his work, who slammed all the doors then laughed all the way to the bank? I say Affleck more than Nelson represents that evil glibness, that corporate zombie mentality, that has cost this nation everything. In fact, Nelson seems to be Affleck-in-the-future, only Affleck learns his lessons at the construction site where he works for his brother-in-law.
In other words, he has his glibness torn from him savagely. I kept saying, "Good." There was no way I would ever feel sorry for Affleck's character.
Get this and watch it at least twice. Aside from possibly catching all the stupidly mumbled dialogue which you'll surely miss on the 1st viewing, you'll catch a great deal more. Aside from Affleck's unending lack of acting talent, you will discover that every line spoken here is a lesson. This film without the "f-bombs" and the "mo-fo bombs" which can be edited out in a cinch should be shown in schools.
Craig T. Nelson to a fired Tommy Lee Jones: "My shares are worth $600 million. How much are yours worth?"
And I thought, THAT is a profound and challenging question to America. Watch this great film (in spite of Affleck, whom I always jokingly call "Ben Affect" as in "lack of affect"). Find out just what Jones' "shares" are worth. From this, America just might relearn who and what it really is.
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