If schadenfreude, or taking pleasure from someone else’s misfortune, is your thing, run, do not walk, to “The Company Men,” and get a fix watching the rich and powerful take a financial and psychological beating by being fired. It’s fitting emotional revenge for so many of us who have seen employees sacrificed on the altar of a CEO’s salary.
We’re in Boston, where a big-time, high-profile firm is in the throes of corporate despondency because the bottom line is heading toward the bottom. Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) and his comfortable, six-figure salary, have been escorted out the door. He’s only the first in John Wells’ excellent film about top executives fighting for seats in the lifeboat as the ship goes down.
Wells, who is responsible for some excellent TV work as a producer of “West Wing,” “ER” and other shows, makes his big-screen writing and directing debut in a fast-paced manner and with an excellent cast. Affleck is first-rate as the first to fall, but Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper take charge as co-founders of GTX, top executives and good friends for many years. Jones is Gene McClary, whose loyalty to his workers is paramount,, and Cooper is Phil Woodward, watching age creep up on him. Riding herd is James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson), brilliant as the big boss, totally unfeeling about anything except his own salary of $22 million.
The company is doing poorly for all the usual reasons and the word is out that Nelson is sharpening the axe. Affleck, his psyche badly bruised from the experience, goes to happy-talk exit seminars and job fairs. Finally, he accepts an offer from his brother-in-law (Kevin Costner) to be a gopher and apprentice in construction. Costner and Affleck have an edgy relationship, but Costner steps up out of family loyalty. An interesting situation.
Wells has a good eye for details. A stroll on abandoned pier focuses closely on Jones and Cooper. And speaking of Cooper, he offers a marvelous reaction when a good-hearted but unthinking co-worker suggests he dye his hair.
“The Company Men” makes a good companion piece to last year’s George Clooney film, “Up in the Air,” which looked at the same men in similar circumstances from a different point of view.
The Company Men opens today on several screens
—Joe