BEFORE: I'll get back to Robert Pattinson in a bit, Joel Edgerton too - this part of the chain is all about Ben Kingsley, who carries over from "Life", where his screen time was definitely too short.
THE PLOT: An abandoned wife is evicted from her house and starts a tragic conflict with her house's new owners.
AFTER: This is a rather complicated story about home ownership, and there are plenty of lessons to be drawn from people not doing the right thing, or more accurately, acting very petty when trying to protect their own interests, and then that leads to a lot of rashly-made bad decisions.
To start with, the government is to blame. The county assesses homeowner Kathy Nicolo for not paying a business tax, when she's in fact never owned a business. Now, we don't know much about her situation, except that her husband has left her a couple of months ago, and she's been too depressed to get out of bed, so the house is in disarray and there's a pile of unanswered mail. This is the first bad choice made, because as a homeowner you've got to stay on top of things - she knew about the incorrectly levied tax, even filed paperwork against it with the county clerk (or so she claims...) but the county has gone ahead and filed for foreclosure, over a mere $500 owed in tax, which was apparently assessed incorrectly. And they move fast, putting the house up for auction right away - this part of the story stretches credulity just a bit, because when have you ever known local government, or any government to be so darn efficient?
At the same time, the head of an Iranian family is working two blue-collar jobs and keeping a close eye on his family's finances, and he realizes that with all the money paid in rent for a VERY nice apartment, they could have had a house by now. Plus after paying for his daughter's wedding, he realizes that his son is getting close to college age, and there's no plan in place to pay for that. So he decides to put a bid on a house that's going up for auction, paying about a quarter of the house's value, and this puts his family on a collision course with the woman who's just lost her house due to the county's mistake. I have to call my first NITPICK POINT here, though, because this Iranian man, Mr. Behrani, is buying the house for a place to live with his wife and son, but also is very interested in flipping the house, he wants to sell it as soon as possible for at least four times what he paid. These are two separate, conflicting interests. Most people who want to flip a house don't also live there, because they're planning on doing a bunch of repair and improvement work AND they want to get rid of it quickly, so it doesn't make sense to move in all their nice stuff.
I mean, I get that he doesn't want to pay rent on the expensive apartment any more, that just makes sense. When I was 24 I was tired of paying rent because I wasn't building up any equity, so my first wife and I invested in a Brooklyn condominium. We qualified for a mortgage where we only had to put 5K down, not 10, and it was in a building that had been foreclosed on by NYC (it had something to do with the big parking meter scandal of the late 80's...) and since the new owners rehabbed and redeveloped it for residential use, the J-51 clause meant there would be no real estate taxes owed for at least the first 10 years. This sweetheart property deal turned out to be the best financial decision I ever made, as 11 years later, post-divorce, I sold the condo and bought 2/3 of a house with the profit. The bank still has a mortgage on 1/4 of the purchase price, but if I live long enough I may own a full piece of property someday.
(I also have NITPICK POINT #2 at this point, which is that we see Mr. Behrani changing from his road crew work outfit into a VERY nice suit at some hotel where he parked his car, but why? He's got a night job working the counter at a gas station/mini-mart, why put on the nice suit for what, just a couple of hours? Maybe he's really vain, but someone working these crappy jobs would have no right to be...)
Anyway, this conundrum over who really owns the house gets worse when Kathy starts seeing a local deputy, who falls for her (feels sorry for her?) and they start a relationship. Another bad decision, especially if she only starts a relationship with this married man because she needs help, or a place to live, or even just moral support. This should have been a time for her character to grow a backbone, follow the advice of her lawyer and let the courts settle the matter of getting back her house, or at least getting her some financial compensation for the county's mistake. Instead she tries to confront the new residents of the house directly, which her lawyer really should have explicitly told her NOT to do, and another bad decision leads to her getting injured when she steps on a board with nails in it left on the ground while a construction crew was adding a roof deck to the house.
And so the new deputy boyfriend is dragged into her problems, he goes over to the house himself and tries a little intimidation play, threatening the family with deportation (even though they're valid U.S. citizens, but he doesn't know that) and this gets him into trouble with Internal Affairs. Plus it turns out he hasn't really officially separated with his wife yet, so there's all that drama with his wife and kids, all because a woman wouldn't open her mail. More life lessons, but things are going to get even darker.
I can't stress this enough, there was a simple way of avoiding all of this human drama that results from people being confrontational and not working well together in person. She should have heeded the advice of her lawyer and let the courts determine the ownership of the house - this would have taken just a few months, but when Kathy heard the time-frame, she immediately accused her lawyer of being incompetent and not doing her job - but THAT IS her job. This problem is not going to be fixed overnight, that much is clear, but it's not going to get fixed AT ALL if you piss off your lawyer or fire her if you don't have the patience to let this play out in the courts. Another bad decision. At the very least, a good real-estate lawyer could have filed an injunction right away to prevent the new "owner" from selling the property until the county's mistake could be investigated and the proper ownership of the house could be proven. The county would then also have the power to nullify the auction sale and force the sale of the house back to the county at cost. Am I right?
Unfortunately, a court case over a home sale gone awry wouldn't be very cinematic, it just doesn't hold enough pathos for a film about people determined to circle the drain. So the film therefore does everything it can to prevent anyone from filing a lawsuit, but isn't that the way we should be resolving things in American society? Nothing good ever came from storming over to someone's residence and confronting them, it's better to file something in court. Near the end of the film, it seems like Mr. Berhani has come up with a creative, unique solution to make everyone happy, and it's complicated, but it's just crazy enough to work - except for the fact that it's just not that kind of film. They could have promoted this with the tagline: "It's the feel-bad film of the year!"
But here's my biggest NITPICK POINT #3, which concerns the fact that Kathy got injured by stepping on some nails at the house, which were left on the ground by contractors hired by Mr. Berhani. Even if you put the home ownership issue aside for just a minute, the fact that they were in his employ makes him ultimately responsible for her injury. Why on earth wouldn't her lawyer recommend filing a lawsuit for this injury, plus the ever-popular "pain and suffering and emotional distress"? I mean, her foot was bleeding pretty bad, and she probably needed a tetanus shot. That's got to be worth six figures of compensation, easy, and that's all potential leverage to help her get the house back. Right, she was a real-estate lawyer, not a personal injury lawyer, but I bet she could have recommended someone. Oh, wait, that would take months, so it's not a valid solution? Just the THREAT of an injury lawsuit could have been enough to get him to sign the house back over to her, I bet - so I'm really curious to find out why this wasn't followed up on, as a bigger plot point.
This film came to the surface of my list at a time when my wife and I just completed a round of home repairs. We've had the refrigerator repaired three times, by two different companies, and though it seems to be working fine right now, but we're ready at a moment's notice to buy two bags of party ice to fill the cooler and save the important food. Still, there's that feeling that as soon as we're away for a weekend, it's going to decide to shut off again and all the food in the freezer will defrost and be ruined. I'm a firm believer in getting appliances fixed if possible, not just replacing them at the drop of a hat, but there comes a point with every appliance where it just seems to want to die. On top of that, we had a leak under the kitchen sink, and good luck finding a plumber on a Friday evening (or the Memorial Day holiday, for that matter) but we did find one, so after the leak was fixed we put him to work on two toilets that wouldn't flush properly, and also retrieving my wedding ring from under the basement sink.
(We were also down an air conditioner, but instead of just buying a replacement, I tested the outlet on a whim, and found that there was nothing wrong with the appliance, it just wasn't getting power. The day before an electrician showed up to repair the outlet, I realized that the circuit breaker had been tripped, so that home repair cost me zero dollars. You just have to remember to check every possible thing before calling a professional.)
But we've been in this house for 15 years, almost, so things are going to break down or need to be upgraded or replaced. We're also talking about refinancing, to maybe get a better interest rate to bring our monthly payment down, but I don't really want to extend the term of the mortgage or have to pay any points. But it's time we started using our equity for something, like maybe a line of credit to start improving some things around the house. The house is assessing for more than it did when we bought it, so that leads to the question of whether it makes sense to continue to own it, when we could be cashing in. But then the conundrum of home ownership is - if you sell it, where are you going to live? And then what are you going to do with the money, you almost have to buy another piece of property with the money so you don't have to pay tax on the income. The only real way to profit from one's investment is to sell it, but even if the house sells for twice what you bought it for, it still seems to be a case of "mo' money, mo' problems".
Also starring Jennifer Connelly (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Shohreh Aghdashloo (last seen in "Star Trek Beyond"), Ron Eldard (last seen in "Jobs"), Frances Fisher (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Jonathan Ahdout, Kim Dickens (last seen in "The Gift"), Carlos Gomez (last seen in "The Crew"), Navi Rawat.
RATING: 5 out of 10 tiny liquor bottles (another bad decision - just buy the fifth, already)
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