When unemployed construction worker Dennis Nash finally gets evicted from his family house that he had been desperately trying against all odds to hang onto, he and his pre-teen son Connor, and his hairdresser mother get unceremoniously dumped with all their possession on their front lawn by the Bailiffs. The year is 2010 and their unprepossessing house in Orlando is just one of several thousands that are getting foreclosed by the Banks on a daily basis. In Nash’s case, as in many others, the Realtor/developer who is acting on the Bank’s behalf is a very smooth unblinking Rick Carver and he is there standing behind the Sheriff and gives the Nash’s just two minutes to pack any personal items before his men will totally empty the house. He is an old hand at this so is totally unmoved by all the desperate pleading and begging by Nash to be allowed to stay for just another day and insists that he is being too generous in even allowing them even these few minutes.
Stranded with the few household items that they can pile in their truck, they end up at a run-down motel which is mainly occupied by other former homeowners facing the same dead-end predicament. However a chance encounter with Carver next day, has Nash in the unlikely situation of doing some ghastly manual labour which no-one else will do, and as a result he is able to thrill his family when he returns that night with $250 in his pocket and the promise of more casual work. He does however deliberately avoid telling either his son or his mother that the source of the income is the very man who evicted them the day before.
At first the work is piecemeal but Carver sees qualities in the hard-grafting Nash that he likes and respects and he soon adopts him as a full-time protege. The trouble is that the work involves more than just evicting people who have fallen on hard time but also stripping their houses bare to make even more money. Carver offers him such lucrative wages that are more than he has ever earned in his life now, so having his own Faustian moment, Nash accepts as this it will enable him to get his own house back even though the price he will pay will mean making more people and families just like him homeless.
Carver keeps drumming into his new right hand man ‘don’t get emotional about real estate‘ but it’s a losing battle for as competent as he is about playing the heavy man and fronting the evictions himself, it is obvious that Nash’s heart is really not in it. He is committed to it though as Carver agrees that he can buy his own family home back, although to appease the Bank he will need to make it look like a legitimate fair market sale, Nash will not be able to actually move back in for a couple of weeks. It is during that waiting period when it looks like his whole new life may blow up in his face as one day one of the new arrivals at the Motel is a couple who he had evicted, and who are now about to expose him to everyone, including Connor and his mother.This compelling drama packed full of angst and tension so perfectly captured the depressing effects from the economic recession at the beginning of the millennium that resulted in so many people losing their homes. The Carver character with his complete lack or morals and principles, full of sheer greed, and not adverse to bending the law was a good representation of the shady types who made a killing in those days out of every one else’s misery. Portrayed here so superbly by Michael Shannon who somehow made the sharp-suited slick shyster almost likable at times, it was a powerful performance that was never ever less than mesmerizing. Nash his right hand was played by Brit Andrew Garfield who had swapped his usual Spiderman garb for more humble working man’s attire, and he filled the part with compassion and just enough uncertainty to ensure that even if we could not predict the end, we knew he would turn out to be a goodie after all. The always reliable Laura Dern played his slightly ditzy mother who wised up when she had too.
Written and directed by Iranian/American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, ’99 Homes’ picked up a couple of well-deserved awards at the Venice Film Festival and is highly entertaining movie, albeit a tad nerve racking at times for any home owner.
