THE COMPANY MEN

The company in question is in fact a corporation called GTX which once  made things that were real like ships but now it just makes money, bucket loads of it.  And it  did this very well until the credit crunch of 2008 happened and suddenly everyone started to feel the pinch.  Evidently the stockholders felt it most and to appease them and keep the stock price high, the CEO, without a moment’s hesitation, instructs his lawyers to lay off several thousands of people at a time with scant regard of the consequences on any of their lives.  The fact that the Company Men in this case are not blue-collared manual workers but wealthy and privileged executives earning 6 figure salaries and driving Porsches and living in fancy houses, means that I guess in the bigger scheme of things one really should not feel that sorry for them.  After all they may be jobless, and the Porsche may have to go, but they are not exactly on welfare.  But somehow I did.  Just a tad.  Care that is.

Could be cos the fact that life-altering situations such as this do impact all ‘victims’ and their families on a major scale regardless of the size of their (last) pay packet.  Some people never ever recover, but others like 2 of the main protagonists here, actually come through it having reclaimed some of their ideals and principles that they had sacrificed clawing their way up the company ladder.

Could be also that this is a really well crafted movie that has been made by some very powerful talent both sides of the camera.  It’s the feature film directing debut of John Wells the multi-Emmy winning main man behind such mega TV hits such as ‘ER’ and ‘West Wing’ .  And his most impressive cast of acting heavyweights includes no less than 4 Oscar winners viz. Ben Affleck, Timmy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner.  It was the reason that I saw the movie, and I’m glad I did as it was at least entertaining.  And it made me think too.  Just a tad.