THE COMPANY MEN

Written and Directed by John Wells

Starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt and Kevin Costner

Phil Woodward: You know what's the worst part? The world didn't stop. I mean, my life ended and nobody noticed.

I’m not sure if you were aware of this but the world’s financial markets crashed hard in the later part of 2008. Thousands upon thousands of people lost their jobs, their homes and their lives as they knew them. Two years later, the situation is on a reasonable mend but many are still without work and still losing their livelihoods. I don’t mean to make light of these difficult times; obviously, you were already aware of everything I just wrote. John Wells, one of the men behind the long-running television series, “E.R.” and the director of THE COMPANY MEN, however, seems to just be joining the table with his first feature. The ensemble drama attempts to tackle the fallout from this economic crisis but only ends up playing out like a whiney reluctance to let go of America’s overinflated financial hay day.

THE COMPANY MEN opens on Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), strutting into his fancy office after playing a few rounds of golf before coming in. Little does he know, he is about to get canned. The company Bobby has worked for for 12 years, where he earns a salary of more than $120K plus incentives and bonuses, is downsizing in light of the crash. What follows this, is one overwrought termination cliché after another. Will Bobby be able to make his next mortgage payment? Will Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper) be able send his child to an Ivy League university in the fall? Will that other random unemployed guy be able to find another job in his field or will he have to lower his expectations in order to make ends meet? And it doesn’t stop there either. Before the movie ends, some executives will feel great guilt over sacrificing people at the hands of the shareholders, while others will collect their bonuses despite massive layoffs. All that was missing was some suit caving under the pressure and killing himself. Oh wait, it has that too.

Wells clearly believes he is telling an important story and the men of THE COMPANY MEN (also including Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner and Craig T. Nelson) do their best to make the plights feel real, but the truth of it is that the problems they face are those of people who were already privileged to begin with. No one here has to face homelessness or hunger. No, everyone here has their savings to fall back on. Everyone here had a great job to start with, which gives them an advantage over all the other people who were already struggling to begin with, when they lost their jobs. All spending time in the company of these men accomplishes, as they lament the good old days when they used money for toilet paper, is the highly unsympathetic reminder that they were living way too large to begin with.

TIFF Review: THE TOWN

Written by Peter Craig, Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard

Directed by Ben Affleck

Starring Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall and Jeremy Renner

By now, we all know that Ben Affleck is from Boston. His first film as director, GONE BABY GONE, is set there and he has now returned home for his second feature, THE TOWN. The titular town in question is Charlestown, a town in Boston that has seen more bank robberies than apparently any other in the world. Personally, I would think twice about even opening a bank there with statistics like that, but people need their money and other people need to steal it. In THE TOWN, Affleck gives us a delicate, albeit straightforward, balance between these people.

There is nothing particularly new and exciting about the premise. A group of four “townies”, including director himself, Affleck, and new “It” boy, Jeremy Renner, hold up a local bank and take the bank manager (Rebecca Hall) hostage. Affleck stalks her a little afterward to make sure she doesn’t know anything that the FBI can use to find them, but then something unexpected happens; he falls for her. It isn’t really unexpected for us but rather for him. All he’s known his whole life is crime; even his father (Chris Cooper) is doing time and proud of it. I think what he didn’t expect was that he might want something else from life, something more stable and meaningful – something that you actually can’t steal but rather have to earn.

Affleck is quickly becoming a more relevant persona as a director than as an actor, but it is his lead performance in THE TOWN that anchors the film. The supporting cast, including Jon Hamm without a cigarette hanging out of his mouth all the time, is stellar, but Affleck is the big winner here. He may not have found a way to inspire insight from his work as a filmmaker just yet but he knows how to control the story, command the audience’s attention and, most importantly, keep us entertained. My money says he is going to continue to grow on this path. I just won’t be putting that money in any townie bank any time soon.

MARRIED LIFE

Written by Ira Sachs and Oren Moverman
Directed by Ira Sachs
Starring: Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams


Richard Langley: I always felt marriage was like a mild illness, like the flu or chicken pox.

The biggest problem with MARRIED LIFE, the movie not the state of existence, is the tone set by its title. Before even setting foot in the theatre, your mind is filled with preconceived notions about the likelihoods the film will deliver. You cannot expect a film called MARRIED LIFE to show long term couples just as happy now as they were when they first met. In fact, in these cynical times, you might likely be disappointed if you didn’t see spouses abusing each other, scheming and plotting against the other or, if you want to be old fashioned, just plain cheating on each other. Perhaps to offset these expectations, writer/director, Ira Sachs, sets his story in the 1940’s, a supposedly simpler time when people were married and stayed that way despite their personal unhappiness. Even a setting as delicately composed as this one is not a good enough disguise for its contemporary sensibility. The film’s fate seems sealed as soon as the opening credits begin to roll. Similar in design and manner to television’s “Desperate Housewives”, a show that has built its reputation on couples scheming, they seem to announce Sach’s intention to give us exactly what we expect. Only when the final animated frame settles on a city skyline and you expect the real thing to take its place, Sachs reveals that it is in fact a reflection. With the lens pointing inward now, I wonder if I’ve spoken too soon.


Like the beginning of a marriage, for a while, it is good. The strings of the score swell and sweep you up into the sentiment like a warm wind taking you for a dance in the sky overlooking a quiet family-friendly suburban street. This particular street is home to Harry and Pat Allen (Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson). The two have been married for what might as well be forever and they still cherish and respect each other but whether they still love each other is a question that looms over their lives like a heavy cloud. Harry believes that love is defined by the desire to give constantly to the other person. Pat believes that love is sex. Despite their definitions being categorically on different pages, they are a solid, functional couple. However, Harry has found another woman, Kay (Rachel McAdams in a refreshing return that is more tender and vulnerable than past performances) for whom continuously being doted on is the perfect compliment to her lonely life. I suppose it doesn’t hurt that she is younger and beautiful but Harry conveniently avoids seeing this as the motivating factor for his affection.


And so Harry finds himself in quite the pickle. He doesn’t want to burden his wife with the embarrassment of a divorce but yet he cannot deny that he is no longer in love with her. Harry is a sensible businessman who lives his life with order and reason and is still able to embrace his more romantic sensibility, wanting his life to embody the love he feels. He racks his brain to come up with the tidiest, most logical solution to his dilemma and somehow, the best plan he can come up with is to kill his wife. He rationalizes that this will cause the least amount of pain to all involved, including his children. Is it me or is this the least rational course of action? Essentially, this becomes MARRIED LIFE’s main storyline and as it is ridiculous in concept, it also serves to undermine the intelligence of what was otherwise a fairly engaging film. Even Sachs seems unsure of this whole direction as he throws in a couple of painfully obvious scenes about how death can take away misery rather than add to it. If Sachs isn’t buying it, I’m not sure how he thought anyone else would.


Despite its shortcomings, MARRIED LIFE does plant a few seeds of wisdom in its perfectly tended garden. The banalities of spending every day of your life with the same person are accepted by most of the characters as a perfectly normal piece of the pie. With decades past between their time and ours, have we really changed all that much? There are so many things happening and left unsaid in any marriage with both partners none the wiser. Subsequently, we have fine-tuned an uncanny ability to exist in a state of comfortable misery. We may look elsewhere for distraction but so many never walk away from what they know isn’t working. Applying that same logic makes sitting through MARRIED LIFE entirely acceptable while you wonder what’s playing next door.