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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

The Company Men

nMore and more Americans are finding themselves jobless for longer than they would’ve thought possible. And if you listen to many republicans, it’s their own fault, a consequence of underachieving at school, a bad work ethic, or laziness caused by those fat unemployment checks.

That’s why it’s a good time for the Company Men, a film about a year in the life of three executives as their Massachusetts shipping company is buffeted by wave after wave of layoffs. Ben Affleck plays Bobby, who’s living the dream with a six-figure salary, a beautiful family and home, and enough money for a Porsche and membership at a tony country club. When Bobby gets axed as the meltdown unfolds, he reacts with indignation, then with misplaced optimism and entitlement, expecting companies to come running to hire a worthy applicant like himself.

Things look bleaker for Phil, played by Chris Cooper. With his youth behind him and two kids in college, he finds himself competing with applicants half his age who’re willing to work longer hours for less pay. The experience that should’ve been Phil’s greatest asset is now a liability as he’s told to shorten his resumé and dye his graying hair. On the other side is Gene, played by Tommy Lee Jones, a top executive who watches as his friend and boss, played by Craig T. Nelson, lays off thousands of employees to keep stock prices high, shareholders happy, and justify his multimillion-dollar salary.

Bobby and Phil show the humiliation and denial felt by so many who lose their jobs, refusing to tell their friends about their struggles and reluctant to scale back their lifestyles should it be seen as evidence of failure. It takes moving back in with his parents and working construction under his crotchety brother-in-law, played by Kevin Costner, for Bobby to learn humility, while Phil, unable to adjust, sinks into drinking and depression. Gene, who has plenty of money, is left wondering what happened to the honest American way of doing business, and the moribund manufacturing base it was built on.

That’s where the Company Men runs into problems. In the end, you’re asked to feel sympathy for three men who were in the top 5% of wage earners, one of whom is fabulously rich. With so many people living check to check, uninsured and struggling to get by even when they HAVE jobs, it feels odd to focus on the hardships of the upper middle and upper upper class. Since the Company Men is more about a situation than a story, there isn’t much of a plot, and while the acting is solid, the characters are a bit thin.

But the Company Men works best as a refutation of republican stereotypes about the unemployed. As the film, along with reality, attests, jobless Americans are not only desperate for work, but, for better or worse, define themselves by their work and the social standing it provides. Losing a job becomes losing identity, with repercussions that are financial, emotional and even spiritual.

With high unemployment looking like the new normal, one hopes that Americans can
learn to save more, live with less, appreciate what they have and not see their jobs as synonymous with themselves. Which is a lot harder to do if you aren’t an executive.

The Company Men is rated R and is in theaters January 2011.