THE COMPANY MEN -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 5/23/11

 

If you've ever been laid off from your $130,000-a-year job and had to sell your Porsche just to pay your golf club dues, you'll really identify with Ben Affleck's character in THE COMPANY MEN (2010).  If, however, you don't quite fall within that particular poverty bracket, then this film serves as a mildly entertaining look at how the other half fails.

Hot-shot young exec Bobby Walker (Affleck) gets pink-slipped along with hundreds of other chumps when his high-profile company GTX downsizes in order to make greedy CEO James Salinger (old fave Craig T. Nelson, POLTERGEIST) even richer.  Trouble is, Bobby's having trouble gearing down his extravagant lifestyle (big house, sports car, etc.) even though it's suddenly sucking him dry of every last precious cent. 

His loyal wife Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt) and sensitive son Drew try to help him learn to be more frugal while he searches fruitlessly for another job, but Bobby's pride is at stake.  It's actually a bit hard to feel sorry for him since he's such a dope, an aspect of the character which Affleck plays very well.  (Okay, that was a cheap shot.)

Also kicked off the gravy train is 30-year company vet Phil, whom we do feel sorry for because Chris Cooper is just so darn good, and because it's even harder for him to find another job because of his age (in a deleted scene that recalls Albert Brooks' LOST IN AMERICA, he's reduced to applying as a pizza delivery man).  Cooper's fun to watch and THE COMPANY MEN is most effective when his character is onscreen being heartrendingly pathetic.
  


Rounding out this roster of rejects is Tommy Lee Jones as Gene McClary, Salinger's long-time partner, whose main failing is that he has a heart.  Yearning for the old days when employees were treated with respect, Gene's vocal opposition to rampant downsizing gets him into hot water with the big cheese and finally lands him on the street as well.  Jones brings his usual hang-dog style to the role and is even more laidback here than in the MEN IN BLACK flicks.  MILF-tastic Maria Bello plays GTX's hatchet woman who is also having an affair with Gene, which places his sense of values in even further conflict. 

The story, which ambles along in a rather dry style that rarely hits any really interesting peaks, is a steady succession of "fail" for its main characters as their once-lofty station in life sinks into a morass of chronic unemployment and reality-check job interviews.  Bobby's desperation finally leads him to accept a job helping his blue-collar brother-in-law Jack (a laconic Kevin Coster) install drywall, giving me a chance to identify with him for once as he gets his first taste of manual labor.  Wait, did I say "identify with"?  I meant "laugh at."



From glancing at the trailer, I got the impression that these guys were going to start their own upstart company and take on the big boys at their own game, but nothing this upbeat or fanciful occurs.  Which, to writer-director John Wells' credit, makes for a more realistic story. Nevertheless, it isn't a lot of fun to watch unless you enjoy seeing some once-successful shlubs scraping bottom.

The DVD from Anchor Bay and the Weinstein Company is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  Extras include a director's commentary, an alternate ending, deleted scenes, and the featurette "Making 'The Company Men.'"

Affleck is well-cast as a shallow jerk who must learn that there's no shame in not being a gold-plated success.  Cooper, as the film's most hopeless casualty, and DeWitt, as Bobby's wise, supportive wife, give the story most of its heart.  Jones, with his comfortable-old-shoe persona, gives us hope that not every corporate executive is a misanthropic creep.  THE COMPANY MEN offers us a dispiriting (save for a final dash of optimism), intermittently interesting, but rarely all that involving look at some guys who get knocked off their perch and tumble downhill reaching for something to grab onto, lest they end up way down here with the rest of us. 

THE COMPANY MEN -- DVD Review by Porfle

ARMAGEDDON -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

(This review originally appeared online at Bumscorner.com in 2006.)

 

Sometimes I just like to sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch a big, dumb, action-packed space opera with awesome special effects, a great cast, and a script that's funny and engaging without taxing the old grey matter too much.  Of course, I'm describing ARMAGEDDON (1998), in which a huge asteroid is discovered to be hurtling directly toward Earth and all life will be wiped out unless NASA can figure out a way to avert it.

By now, many of you have already seen ARMAGEDDON and may be thinking, "Ye gods!  My hatred for that movie shatters galaxies!"  I can understand that, if you're someone who likes his/her sci-fi serious and scientifically accurate, or you hate Michael Bay movies, or both.

If so, you would probably prefer the other asteroid-on-a-collision-course-with-Earth movie, DEEP IMPACT, which came out the same year and was more serious and scientifically accurate.  Or, if you're like me, you like them both in the same way that I like both filet mignon and beef jerky, or Beethoven and the Jingle Cats.

I find ARMAGEDDON hugely entertaining on the Jingle Cats level.  It starts out with the extinction of the dinosaurs by a six-mile-wide meteor smashing into Earth, narrated by Charlton Heston (who else to talk us through a catastrophe of Biblical proportions?), and then skips to the present day with a meteor shower destroying an orbiting space shuttle and taking out much of New York City.

This, it turns out, is merely a prelude to an approaching asteroid the size of Texas (a Rhode Island-sized asteroid would've been bad enough, or even Vermont, but somehow "Texas" sounds better) which will hit the Earth in eighteen days and kill everybody.  Finding a way to stop it, needless to say, shoots right to the top of our government's "Things To Do" list.

The top brain-boys at NASA come up with the only possible solution: they must send two teams of deep-core oil drillers to land their shuttles on the asteroid, drill a really deep hole, and plant a nuclear bomb that will split it into two halves that will spread apart and narrowly miss our planet.  So the world's greatest deep-core driller, Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), and his ragtag team of roughnecks are enlisted to accompany NASA's astronauts on the mission.

Watching these idiots go through an astronaut crash-course and magnificently flunk most of their medical and endurance tests is a highlight of the film.  Udo Kier (ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA) even pops up as a psychiatrist who is shocked by some of the stuff going on in these guys' heads.

This is where a lot of that "great cast" I mentioned comes in.  There's Bruce, of course--one of my favorite actors--supported by guys like Will Patton (THE POSTMAN), Steve Buscemi (FARGO, CON AIR), Michael Clarke Duncan (THE GREEN MILE), Owen Wilson (THE WEDDING CRASHERS), and Ben Affleck.  Ben Affleck? 

Okay, they're not all "great", exactly.  But Ben does a pretty good job as Harry's irresponsible protege', A.J., who gets Harry's dander up by falling in love with his daughter Grace (the ever-popular Liv Tyler).  Harry don't want his li'l girl marryin' no roughneck, so A.J. must prove himself worthy, which he eventually does, of course. 

And then there's Billy Bob Thornton (SLING BLADE) as Dan Truman, the NASA head honcho who coordinates the mission, Jason Isaacs (SOLDIER) as NASA's Mr. Wizard, William Fichtner (CONTACT, THE DARK KNIGHT) as shuttle pilot  Colonel Sharp, Keith David (JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING) as a military officer who is skeptical of the mission's success, and Peter Stormare (FARGO) as Lev, a cosmonaut who ends up on the mission when the Russian space station he's been stuck on for months explodes while the shuttles are refueling.  Like I said, this is one awesome cast.  And Ben Affleck.

The special effects are awesome as well.  The initial shuttle explosion and meteor shower on New York city get the movie off to an explosion-packed start, despite a few instances of hinky CGI.  Most of the other CGI is well done, but there's also a lot of great model work for us more old-fashioned sci-fi fans to enjoy.  The comparatively simple act of refueling the shuttles at the Russian space station results in a tense, SPFX-laden sequence where a lot of stuff blows up real good. 

The shots of the asteroid are often striking, especially in one incredible sequence where the two shuttles are slingshotting around the moon to gain speed and circle around behind the huge rock, and then head straight into a dense hail of debris in the asteroid's trail.  This is the highlight of the movie for me, and, as the old trailers used to proclaim, it's "thrill-packed." 

Once the shuttles have landed (one not quite as successfully as the other), the drillers encounter a variety of hazardous and hostile conditions that hamper their progress and threaten to derail their mission.  Several of our favorite characters get killed.  At one point, the effort to drill a hole deep enough for the bomb looks so hopeless that the military decides to remote-detonate it on the surface, which would not only have no effect on the asteroid, but would also seriously vaporize our heroes. 

And as the clock ticks down to the final deadline for averting global destruction, one of the main characters must make the ultimate sacrifice.  Who will it be?  Will Bruce die hard?  Will GIGLI fans be devastated?  Will Steve Buscemi no longer be "the sexiest man alive"? 

Anyway, I love this stuff.  I don't care if it's scientifically-inaccurate, lowbrow, sappy, or cheesy.  (It's all of those things, and more.)  Michael Bay, one of the most hated directors on the planet, has never made an action movie that I didn't find entertaining in some way.  If I have to put my mind on hold to enjoy THE ROCK, I'll do it (I like putting my mind on hold now and then).  If I have to wade through a crappy love story to get to the mind-boggling action sequences in PEARL HARBOR, fine. 

And if I have to fast-forward through any part of ARMAGEDDON that features an Aerosmith ballad or most of the cast singing a brain-frying rendition of "Leavin' On A Jet Plane", that's okay, too.  It's worth it to enjoy this much pure, unadulterated entertainment that is filled with so many of my favorite actors.  And Ben Affleck.

ARMAGEDDON -- Movie Review by Porfle