The Company Men

The Company Men is probably my biggest disappointment of the year. Here I am unemployed. There’s a ton of us. And unemployment affects white collar workers just the same as blue collar workers. It sucks in the round. So tell me my story, John Wells, and tell me how I should be.

Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) is our hero here. His company retools and he gets laid off. So many have been there. So many are still there. Good premise. And then it all goes down the toilet. Ok, so Ben makes a little more money than I did. OK, so he makes a lot more money than I did. OK, so he gets some cool laid-off benefits that normal white collar workers don’t get. OK, so he has a really expensive car that he wants to keep. OK, so he has a really expensive country club membership that he wants to keep. OK, so he saved nothing for a rainy day despite his six-figure salary. OK, so his expectations are completely out-of-whack. Good LORD, this should have been a diary for any American who has seen his job shipped to Mumbai or Singapore or Mexico City. Instead, it’s like watching cinematic schadenfreude, except the joke is on the viewer who wants to sympathize with the victim.

Your family needs food, money. Give up the Porsche; give up the country club; don’t you dare make me root for this jack-off. John Wells, you have inadvertently, but successfully, presented an argument in favor of corporate greed – “you white collar stiffs deserve what you get for being overpaid and short-sighted for so long.”

Speaking of corporate greed, Company Men has one very good scene in which we see how the big, big boss (Craig T. Nelson) profits from the layoffs. To compete, he says he has to ship jobs overseas, which is exactly what he does. This drives stock price up, or doesn’t drive it down as is the case sometimes; he makes investors and the Board of Directors happy, he get slightly red-in-the-face and then he neatly pockets more than half a billion dollars or more from the exchange. — And here’s the disconnect with the public that should have front and centered your movie – he takes the money, kisses everybody good-bye and pats himself on the back for his ingenuity while crying foul from the choices he was forced to make. He leaves behind an empty building and hundreds of able-bodied, cardboard-box-toting workers in his wake.

This is exactly what happens in corporate America. But I digress.

The point here was Ben Affleck is our champion and he doesn’t seem to represent any of us. His revelations of life come way too late to be forgiven and by then we’re stuck rooting for Kevin Costner. Thanks, movie.

Rated R, 104 Minutes
D: John Wells
W: John Wells
Genre: Unemployment
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: 2nd level Ponzi schemers – you know, the people who took minor profit from corporate greed and then got railroaded; it’s not a big group.
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Actual unemployed white collar workers

[Proud to say I am no longer unemployed, btw, in case you were interested]