Review: COMPANY MEN

COMPANY MEN is an engrossing ensemble drama that, like last year’s UP IN THE AIR, is one of the few current movies to address an issue that affects so much of its audience; that of losing your job in today’s economy. This upper-income tragedy, focusing on three men fired from the same Boston ship-building company is well-written and honest in its observations. Director/writer John Wells comes from a solid TV background (producer/writer on ER and THE WEST WING) and it shows in a positive way. He fills his feature film debut with the virtues of intelligently written TV drama: refined characters, relevance to current events, and a deliberate pace that shows respect for the audience’s interest and intelligence. It’s a very good, if not great film that, with its reliance on close-ups and dialog, often plays like a made-for-TV production, albeit a top-shelf one.

Ben Affleck stars as 37-year-old Bobby Walker, a sales exec so cocky and glib when the film opens that you just know he’s soon destined for pink slip Hell. In denial, he takes his 12-week severance package and goes to the company’s outplacement center where he mocks the instructor’s pep talks because he’s sure this is all a temporary setback. After some frustrating interviews, he soon finds himself working as a laborer for a construction biz owned by the brother-in-law (Kevin Costner) he’s always looked down on. Tommy Lee Jones plays Gene, the company’s second in command who finds himself axed for bad faith after arguing against the extensive downsizing with the cold-blooded CEO (Craig T. Nelson) who celebrates the increased stock value by preparing new, affluent headquarters.

At first it’s a bit hard to feel badly for these two characters, the ‘corporate class’ who seem ridiculously overpaid in the first place. The shallow Bobby seems most annoyed that his golf club membership is denied and lets his more grounded wife (Rosemarie DeWitt ) deal with the reality of the crisis. Gene lets his antique-collecting wife take the company jet on shopping sprees so he can spend more time in a swank hotel with his mistress (an underused Maria Bello), who just happens to be the company’s axe-wielding HR head (….awkward!). Most of the despair in COMPANY MEN is centered on the third main character, Phil Woodward, played by Chris Cooper. Phil realizes the hard way that companies simply don’t hire men pushing 60 with gray hair and that older, higher-paid employees are usually at the top of the downsizing list. Phil had started with the company as a grunt and worked his way to the top but in the process became invisible. Phil’s anguish is palpable but his fate is telegraphed so early on, you spend half the movie waiting for him to close that garage door.

The three leads in COMPANY MEN fit snugly into roles that seem written for them. Affleck’s perfectly cast (which of course means he’s kind of a weenie), Jones does his usual world-weary shtick, and Cooper plays hang-dog humiliation as well as anyone. Dancing around these major players in a supporting performance so good I’m surprised the Academy didn’t recognize him is Kevin Costner. Costner’s flinty, blue-collar good guy gets the film’s best lines and COMPANY MEN is most alive when he’s on screen. COMPANY MEN gives the audience a more absolute understanding of the mess we’re in than UP IN THE AIR but it’s not nearly as cinematic, or as good. Despite ending on a tenuously optimistic note, COMPANY MEN is far from uplifting. These company men don’t have George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham looking over their shoulders telling them it’s the beginning of a better life when they’re stuck in cubicles with telephones desperately searching for jobs that no longer exist.

3 1/2 of 5 Stars