Review: The Company Men

In this crappy economy, you'd think that a movie about how people are dealing with layoffs and corporate consolidation and difficult economic situations would be compelling and fascinating. Unfortunately, if the movie is The Company Men, it fails to engage and in fact feels oddly out of step with today's world.

Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) is a savvy sales director -- or something along those lines -- who finds himself unexpectedly laid off when the large corporation where he works consolidates his division down to nothing. Shipbuilding isn't what it used to be, you see. His boss, Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) is just as angry -- CEO James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) waited until Gene was out of town to take care of the consolidations and mass firings. Bobby's coworker Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper) worries he'll be next, and where is an over-50 guy who needs to keep working to keep his kids in college going to find another job?

One difficulty here is that all these guys are so very privileged at the beginning of the movie that it's difficult to feel much sympathy for them. Poor Bobby has to sell his Porsche! And his wife has to go back to work to support the family! And they can't cover the mortgage on a nurse's salary, so they're going to lose the house. Eventually things grow even worse for the family, but by that point it feels too late to be very sympathetic.

Perhaps that's the problem with The Company Men: it's arriving in theaters at the wrong time. Many of the people watching the movie have been laid off, or fired, or taken salary cuts. Or it's happened to someone they know. And most of us aren't in the high position of privilege that the main characters of this movie are in at its beginning. It's hard to feel much for the smooth-talking white guys in suits, even though the actors portraying them give such excellent performances.

It doesn't help, either, that Tommy Lee Jones's character spouts such ponderous, unsubtle dialogue as the conscience of the film. "We used to build things," he remembers nostalgically. Oh, the good old days of shipbuilding, when a man could do a man's job, before all this health-care management business crap ruined everything. Oh, to return to an era when employers felt a moral duty to their employees. Gene sure seems regretful and moral, as he slips out of his huge mansion to go cheat on his spendthrift wife with the young HR rep (Maria Bello) who's been in charge of all the firings.

Kevin Costner has a nice turn as Bobby's blue-collar brother-in-law who mocks his suits and his slick job but ultimately reveals a a slightly softer and more generous side. But like most of the cast, he has little to work with in terms of complex characterization and realistic dialogue. Most of these characters are stereotypes, wasting talents like Maria Bello and Rosemarie DeWitt. The movie rushes through a long stretch of time and doesn't stop to develop any character nuances.

I think The Company Men might have worked well as a TV drama, something along the lines of The West Wing, which writer/director John Wells also wrote. A year in the life of a downsizing corporation, and how it affected a few employees on different rungs -- not just the wealthy guys -- could make for a great TV series. As a movie, however, the premise is shoehorned into a standard, almost melodramatic plot with too many predictable turns. The movie is 104 minutes but feels like more than two hours. In this crappy economy, save your money for something more entertaining.