Review: The Company Men

Review: The Company Men

Rating: ***

Nonna's Rating: $$

Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

Audience: 59%

I was just thinking it might be appropriate for me to recuse myself from reviewing this movie. I identify so closely with many of the characters' experiences, I'm not sure I can maintain a suitable level of objectivity.

Well, here goes.

The Company Men focuses on the lives of three corporate executives who work for a Boston conglomerate originally a shipbuilding company. Ben Affleck (Bobby) is a young up-and-comer who loves the perks of his life: golfing, his Porsche, his beautiful home (undoubtedly bought with too little down and a huge mortgage). Tommy Lee Jones (Gene) is the best friend of the CEO, living the good life with plenty of stock options, antiques in his ocean-front home, a bored wife, and a lover (Maria Bello) who, as head of HR at the firm, is responsible for designing and executing massive layoffs. Chris Cooper (Phil), also near the end of his career, worked his way up the corporate ladder from riveter to head of a manufacturing operation. All three of these men are laid off; all three, who have so closely identified their worth with their jobs, take steps to cope with their new realities, some more successfully than others.

Rosemarie DeWitt as Maggie, Bobby's wife, gives a strong performance. Kevin Costner rounds out the ensemble as Bobby's level-headed blue-collar brother-in-law. All the actors deliver fine performances. Affleck is convincingly unlikable at the beginning of the film and manages to convincingly redeem himself by the end.

The portrayal of the atmosphere of outplacement firms was very accurate, although the chanting of the slogan was a bit much -- though not impossible. The "real" offices reserved for big shots reminded me of the locked gold doors at my outplacement firm -- to which only CEOs, CFOs, COOs and other acronym-burdened jobless people had keys.

Some have criticized this movie, saying that it's difficult to feel sympathy for affluent white-collar workers who suddenly realize they can't keep the Porsche or send their kids to the Ivy League. But the movie goes beyond this viewpoint in that the experience of being laid off makes most of the characters reassess their attitude toward the acquisition of expensive things and begin to value their lives, their families, and their relationships in new ways.

Nonna's Ratings:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price

$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it