Rating:  

Starring: Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Kevin Costner, Craig T. Nelson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Maria Bello, Eamonn Walker, Cady Huffman, Tom Kemp, Nancy Villone, Patricia Kalember, Dana Eskelson.
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Director: John Wells
Rating: R
Running Time: 105 Mins.
Release Date: January 21, 2011
Home Video Release Date: June 7, 2011
Box Office: $4.4 Million
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Battle Mountain Films, Spring Creek Productions, Company Men Productions, and The Weinsten Company.

Written by: John Wells.

Ripped from the painful realities of the 2008 economic downfall, John Wells’ debut effort, “The Company Men”, is a film that attempts to bring the pain, frustration, and aggravation millions have faced in a landscape of escalating unemployment numbers, incessant outsourcing of American corporate employment opportunities, and the dwindling or flatout elimination of workers’ 401(k) and retirement plans. “The Company Men” is a timely and ambitious film, which feels as if its existence is an attempt to put an arm around someone affected personally by this crisis – a sort of reminder that we are all in this together and we all can relate to what is happening.

Much of what makes “The Company Men” feel so important and necessary is that it attempts to tell a tale of economic woe during a time of a modernized Depression and actual economic hardship. Wells, a longtime television producer (The West Wing, ER) produced, wrote, and directed this film, his first, and at times “The Company Men” feels urgent and immediate.

But what saddles “The Company Men” from achieving greatness is that Wells cannot ignore the trapdoors a first-time filmmaker often steps in. In the confines of his film, he has a sketchy focus on who to properly drive the narrative through. Certainly as the lead, Ben Affleck’s Bobby Walker must serve as the reference point of which the story is launched because of his sudden and shocking firing from GTX, a massively successful shipbuilding corporation. Credence is given to Tommy Lee Jones’ Gene McClary, GTX’s Vice-President, who defaulted on the side of the employee when his boss, Salinger (Craig T. Nelson), only carries concern when it relates to company profits and personal wealth.

As interesting as Affleck and Jones’ characters are to the story being told, they are saddled with personality characteristics making them hard to, at times even difficult to, rally behind in their plight. As Bobby tries to convince his wife Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt) that everything is alright and his firing is nothing more than a small bump in the road, you empathize with his trying to keep the status quo for his family when everything around him is in disarray. He repeatedly shuns his gruff brother-in-law (Kevin Costner) and his offers to work with his construction company. It soon becomes apparent that Bobby does not truly grasp the ramifications that his losing work means for his family and Wells writes Maggie as something of a chiding and nagging wife. For a significant stretch, it seems that in scene after scene Maggie is telling Bobby they might need to sell the house because they are underwater on the mortgage, she should go back to work for awhile to help contribute, and they will have to cut way back on lots of disposable expenses. She is the voice of reason and uncomfortably Wells seems to vilify her for that.

Any compassion you feel for Tommy Lee Jones’ McClary character, swimming upstream in a corporate environment that has betrayed him, starts to erode when you realize that not only is Jones betraying his own wife with a mistress, but that same mistress (Maria Bello) is the corporate executive tasked with administering the hundreds of layoffs levied by the GTX Board of Directors. The subplot goes absolutely nowhere, wastes a talented actress in Maria Bello, and makes McClary unlikable. Lost on me, it is simply confounding as to why he is cheating in the first place.

Perhaps John Wells is making a larger comment on the corporate male in general; so driven and greedy in both personal and business wants that the rules of kindness and decency fail to stick. If that is indeed Wells’ point, then ponder the storyline afforded Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper). Hovering at or around 60 years of age, Woodward is a ball of tension and constant internal conflict over his job security, his finances, and the obligations that one college student and one soon-to-be college student force upon him. Cooper captivates on screen and briefly becomes the film’s most intriguing element, until he disappears for a long stretch of time, only to return as an off-the-wagon drunk stumbling around hopelessly in despair. The film takes an obvious turn with Cooper’s character and leaves him a caricature, a symbolic figurehead, and sadly forgettable.

“The Company Men” is a slow, deliberate, and well-intentioned snapshot of the America millions of people, unemployed perhaps for the first time, currently find themselves living in each and every day. For those affected in a manner similar to these characters, the film certainly will hit uncomfortably close to home. But what John Wells fails to capture is the realities facing the non-corporate executives who do not have the luxury of deciding whether or not they should sell their million-dollar home and the new Porsche resting in the garage.

Maybe John Wells should have crafted “The Company Men” as an essay on different types of “company men”; i.e. create characters from different income levels and walks of life and have them endure these events which affect them in a similar scope and scale. Then, have their paths cross. That would be a more reflective and intriguing film with resonating potential, as opposed to this heartfelt but limiting look at a class of people most lower- and middle-class Americans could not care less about in the grander scheme of things.

Should I See It?

An ambitious film, if you can overlook the flawed screenplay, the acting is top notch from Affleck, Cooper, and Jones. Supporting work from Rosemarie DeWitt and Craig T. Nelson is also quite strong.

Timely movies will always draw interest and this is a current and prescient topic, presenting a corporate-based take on the economic situation in America presently.

“The Company Men” has its supporters, but I err on the side of what might have been. The film to be made is here I think, but maybe the timing is wrong to focus on corporate executives and high paid employees losing their jobs. Certainly they have a story to be told in the times we live in, but to everyday people living in a modern day recession/depression, this film will seem hollow and fall on deaf ears.

I will not understand why John Wells, talented as he is, gave his three male leads such personality flaws. They bring nothing to the overall story at all.