Movie Notes: In The Company Of Men
= 2 stars
Starring Aaron Eckhart, Matt Molloy, Stacy Edwards
Directed by Neil LaBute
Synopsis
Two frat-boy middle-manager types, misogynist Chad (Aaron Eckhart) and wussy, emasculated Howard (Matt Malloy) decide to take out their gender frustrations by mentally toying with an vulnerable woman (Stacy Edwards) and ruining her life.
The Good
- Excellent early role for Aaron Eckhart, playing an extremely distasteful and cruel character. Still, it’s odd that he has to enlist Howard’s help in his scheme. If he were really as manly as he claimed, wouldn’t he enact his prank himself?
- True to life: we all know men who feel the need to constantly maintain a “manly” appearance — which I chalk up to deep insecurities. Lots of creepily accurate macho talk in bathrooms and behind closed doors.
- Filmed for an amazingly low budget of $25,000.
- The last twenty minutes, when the men’s true intentions are revealed to Christine are quite appropriately shocking. I was crushed by Howard’s hypocrisy and ineptitude, and devastated by Chad’s inability to feel. And the film’s final frames are deliciously cruel.
The Bad
- The limited locations of office buildings, restrooms, and complete lack of gloss is a rather off-putting and often extremely dull — the first two thirds nearly put me to sleep. Often all there is to latch onto is dialog.
- The fact that Christine is deaf adds an unneeded, additional layer of cruelty.
- LaBute’s visual sense, which I griped about in The Shape Of Things is very flat and at times unbearably lazy.
Conclusion
As with The Shape Of Things, LaBute’s has a distasteful view of humanity — he sees interpersonal relationships as manipulative power games. He picks emotional scabs to reveal unpalatable human behavior, covered up with scars. In The Company Of Men, the pus that oozes out are emasculated, asshole men, demonstrating self-serving behavior that head-shakingly, sometimes acts as a powerful attraction to the opposite sex.
That said, the truly knife-twisting core only comes about in the film’s final moments, after a lot of tedium. I don’t think it was worth the wait. Skip it.
IMDB: In The Company Of Men
Wikipedia: In The Company Of Men
Rotten Tomatoes: In The Company Of Men 88%
I disagree with this review wholeheartedly.
I describe this film, which I recommend to every movie buff I know, as follows: There are no guns, no bombs, not a single act of violence, and yet this is the most purely evil film I believe I have ever seen. Yes, there is not much in the way of changes of scenery. Yes, the dialogue carries the film. Unlike the reviewer, however, I found the payoff to be well worth the wait.
To me, the poor review this brilliant film received says more about today’s film industry than anything else. I suppose I would put it like this: If you are into they typical blockbuster-type film that Hollywood churns out en masse these days, this is not a film for you. If the idea of sitting through a play, which generally has to rely on dialogue to hold the audience’s interest, sounds like torture, this is not a film for you. But if the idea that a film can conjure up pure evil without even an ounce of violence, do yourself a favor and catch this one.
I have made several friends watch this film with me, and it ilicits the same response every time:
“Wow.”
“In The Company of Men” is a brilliant psychological thriller that will leave an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach by the time you get to the end. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s well worth it.
Thanks for your opinion. For what it’s worth, this film intrigued me
enough to make my way through Neil LaBute’s other films, and I much
preferred Your Friends and Neighbors (4 stars) and The Shape Of Things
(3 stars).
I will admit to leaning toward more mainstream fare, but this comes
down to a personal consideration — I primarily watch movies to be
entertained. But even more so, I appreciate the movies that can
communicate a difficult point or tackle hard to swallow subject matter
in an entertaining way, in a sense, subversively tricking the audience.
Two movies that I felt expertly walked the fine line between
entertainment and cynical observations were Todd Solondz’s Happiness
and Welcome To The Dollhouse, both of which I consider five stars.
[…] where men are darkly exposed as jerks and it feels cathartic, check out some early Neil LaBute (In The Company Of Men, Your Friends And […]