BEFORE: Ben Affleck carries over from "The Last Thing He Wanted" to make three Affleck films in a row, with the fourth and final tomorrow. Remember, I'm skipping "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot" and I'll try to reschedule it in August or September.
THE PLOT: A year in the life of three men trying to survive a round of corporate downsizing at a major company - and how that affects them, their families and their communities.
AFTER: OK, my first reaction is "Who gives a crap about these white men who lost their jobs?" but perhaps that's a little bit short-sighted. This film came out during the last real recession (I'm not counting the problems caused by that bank bailout thing) so maybe it has some pertinent life lessons in it if we're headed into another recession now, caused by the pandemic closures.
The "company" in question here is GTX, a giant shipbuilding conglomerate that apparently builds ships for the cruise lines and, umm, other clients too, I guess. Times are tough and orders are down across the board, so layoffs are inevitable - because otherwise the top executives would have to take a pay cut, and for some reason that's just not going to happen. Also I think the company here was trying to make itself look "leaner" so it would be in a better position for a corporate take-over to happen, so that meant salaries had to be cut. (Or was it to discourage a take-over? This point seems to be a little unclear.)
So the film follows three different men who get laid off - top sales associate Bobby Walker, middle-management executive Phil Woodward, and Chief Financial Officer Gene McClary. Each man simply thought that he was invaluable to the company, and they were all wrong. I mean, on some level, those are the breaks, right? But on the other hand, it certainly seems weird that the person with the safest job is the one in charge of laying off all of the others. And the CFO was a co-founder of the company, would it be that easy to lay off someone at that level, who was the second employee ever? Wouldn't a CFO have some kind of job security, or a contract that stated he couldn't be laid off within a certain period of time? How could the company even continue without a CFO? (Umm, also the CFO appears to be having an affair with the HR manager, so I guess even that doesn't buy you much extra time once the pink slips start to get handed out.)
The three men also have very different approaches to dealing with their new unemployed status - Bobby mails out a ton of resumes and starts going on interviews, but since he's from Boston, he's a bit of a hothead and also stubborn, so the job interviews he does get don't go well. He demands more money than the interviewers are willing to give (Umm, not a good strategy) and he also refuses to give up golfing or his Porsche. He argues that the Porsche helps him look like he deserves a six-figure salary, and that's key in getting one - he may have a point, however if he had downgraded to a cheaper car sooner, maybe his family wouldn't have had to sell the house. He ends up taking a job with his wife's brother's construction company, carrying plywood and hanging drywall and such. I guess he had to be broken down and humbled before he deserved to make any more money?
Senior Manager Phil seems to fare a little better at first, he gets a window office at the job center, but having lunch with his contacts only leads him to jobs that he's over-qualified for, or require a lot of travel, and he's considered to old to take them. (Umm, that's age discrimination, and Phil could sue his friends for that and maybe get a nice settlement.) And former CFO Gene has the most opportunity, even though he no longer has a job, he still has a lot of company stock, and the sale of GTX gives him the chance, through selling his stock, to starting his own shipbuilding company, which has the added benefit of bringing business back to Boston's failing waterfront and also allows him to hire a bunch of ex-GTX employees. Well, it's not a happy ending for everybody, but it's at least a good start.
This film provides a great opportunity to hear a lot of those words that sound great when spoken by someone with a Boston accent - like "lumber" (lum-bah), and "shipyard" (ship-yahhd). Kevin Costner, however, tried a little too hard (flashing back perhaps to the times he played "JFK") and his accent wasn't believable - but Affleck's was spot-on, as I would expect it to be.
Also starring Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Chris Cooper (last seen in "Little Women"), Kevin Costner (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Rosemarie DeWitt (last seen in "Promised Land"), Maria Bello (last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Craig T. Nelson (last seen in "The Proposal"), Eamonn Walker (last seen in "Lord of War"), Nancy Villone (last seen in "Stronger"), Tom Kemp (also last seen in "Little Women"), Maryann Plunkett (ditto), Lewis D. Wheeler (ditto), Anthony Estrella (ditto), Dana Eskelson (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Patricia Kalember (last seen in "Rabbit Hole"), Cady Huffman, Anthony O'Leary, Angela Rezza, Kent Shocknek, Tonye Patano (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Kathy Harum (last seen in "Patriots Day"), James Colby (ditto), Lance Greene, Celeste Oliva (last seen in "Bleed for This"), Chris Everett, David Catanzaro, Sasha Spielberg (last seen in "The Post"), John Doman (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Annette Miller, David De Beck (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), William Hill (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days'), Carolyn Pickman, Jeff Barry, David Wilson Barnes (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack")
RATING: 4 out of 10 golf clubs
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