The upper middle class unemployed

The Company Men (2010)

A movie that follows three men in various management positions in a big company that needs to lay off some of its workers and how the men adapt to the unemployment in their various ways. It reflects the economic crisis on the upper middle class, so it was a nice change to see it from that perspective as well. Many people criticize this movie because all of the men already have tons of money, big houses and expensive cars, so that it wouldn't depict the crisis in a truthful manner. Well I have nothing against a movie like this, actually it's nice to see the rich people in trouble for a change and not always the poorly educated lower class. That being said, it's a good current idea but really fails to bring anything new to it. It merely scratches the surface and tends to go with the common routes offering very little what we haven't seen before. The cast is quite good with Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt and surprisingly Kevin Costner doing the best performances of the lot. Tommy Lee Jones and Maria Bello are both quite good as well, though their parts are a bit one dimentional so not much room to shine out from. I knew that Ben Affleck would automatically mean bad acting, but to be honest he wasn't that bad at the start, his hollow performance actually works quite well with the shock the character is going through as he gets fired. But too bad the role had a bit more than just blank staring required and towards the end his horrible acting starts to annoy a bit too much. The movie looks quite great, thanks to Roger Deakins' cinematography which is always brilliant. Other than that it's very straight forward without any tricks. So in the end it had tons of more potential that it really uses and the cast makes this one worth the watch, even though it doesn't leave you with anything in the end.
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