The Company Men is, as stated in my review of Inside Job, the perfect companion piece for that documentary. The movie is about three men working in a big company (played by Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper), who feel the results of the financial crisis in their personal life. They all work for GTX, which is a company that started small building ships, but has grown fast and has even bigger ambitions.
When the crisis starts it has a lot of impact on the company as it has to cut costs, downsize and therefore fire some people. The film gives you an idea how much impact that can have on someone. When you are no longer sure that you’ll be able to go to work the next day or pay your bills on time it makes you question your own worth. Not everybody handles this the same, as The Company Men makes clear.
The dynamics of company life and the constant focus on making profit are shown, which adds to the feeling of “evil companies”. The shareholders are the most important people to some companies, which often results in short-term profit and a lack of long-term vision.
The thing which becomes clear very quickly when watching this film, is that it doesn’t matter if people barely know each other or if they are close friends. The only thing which is important are costs. If firing someone saves costs without much impact on your company then it’s a logical decision to make.
The Company Men tells a very human story and makes you think what you would do if it would happen to yourself. It shows the drama behind the crisis and does so effectively.
Score: 7
Haven’t seen this one but it sounds quite interesting. Affleck isn’t a great actor but definately deserves his time to shine occasionally.
I usually like the movies he’s in, don’t really have an issue with his acting.
After being blow away by the documentairy Inside Job, I finally got around to watching this. This movie however, had far from the same impact. There was no way I was able to identify with any of these characters (especially Affleck’s) even though the performances are great all around (Affleck included). It’s a nice enough movie, but I never got the feeling I had to worry for these people. The background on about corporate policies are well displayed, but don’t really add anything after seeing Inside Job.
I guess I should have watched this one first…
Still very curious about the upcoming HBO movie ‘Too Big to Fail’ which tackles the same subject.
Watching this movie back to back I did identify with the characters and how the crash impacted midlevel management at various companies. Inside Job showed the big picture, this movie focussed on part of it. Of course it brings nothing new, but it makes it a more human/personal story.
Haven’t heard about the HBO movie, but as it’s HBO I expect it to be good!