Movie Review: '99 Homes'
By Bill Wine
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- If the title, 99 Homes, gets you preoccupied with the 99 percenters, well, you've parked in the right driveway.
The global economic crisis – specifically, the housing collapse in Florida in 2010, two years after the financial crisis – is the springboard for this painfully resonant drama that shows homes being turned, sadly, back into houses.
Andrew Garfield plays Dennis Nash, an unemployed construction worker and the single father of a young son, who, during the recession, struggles to get back the home – his childhood home in suburban Orlando -- from which he, his son, and his mother (Laura Dern) were evicted by Rick Carver, a ruthless, richer-by-the-day real estate broker played by Michael Shannon who was appointed by the courts to do the evicting and handle the foreclosure, and who is making a killing on the backs of the less fortunate by exploiting the setup for profit and re-selling the houses.
"America doesn't bail out the losers," the opportunistic Carver tells Nash. "America was built by bailing out winners, by rigging a nation of the winners, by the winners, for the winners."
The predatory Carver turns up on the Nashes' doorstep the very next morning and tells them to take a few minutes to gather their valuables and vacate the premises.
They're given a month to appeal the court's decision.
Ironically, Nash, forced to live in a motel – as many families have been forced to do – in desperation joins the employ of Carver as a handyman, hoping to eventually get his home back.
But soon he finds himself directed by his corrupt mentor to evict other families from their homes, for which he is to be amply rewarded.
To reclaim his childhood home and take care of his fractured family, just how far in the direction of a Faustian bargain, is he willing to go? Will he turn into everything he hates or will he have a crisis of conscience?
Director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo, Man Push Cart, At Any Price, Chop Shop), who co-wrote the story with Bahareh Azimi and the screenplay with Amir Naderi, is not interested in subtlety or subtext. He has a strong story that speaks to the times we live in and he just lets it unfold.
What he has fashioned is a tense and remarkably intense morality tale that plays out without wrinkle or surprise, but with a sickeningly convincing inevitability that gives it a bite to go with its bark.
Garfield and Shannon provide an excellent matched set of salt-and-pepper protagonist-and-antagonist, with the likable Garfield encouraging and receiving everyman empathy and subsequent sympathy, while Shannon oozes sleaziness as the formidable villain of the piece.
(3½ stars out of 4!)
99 Homes will sadden you and make you angry while it holds you in its forceful, riveting grip.
So we'll bail out 3-1/2 stars out of 4 for a timely and heartbreakingly powerful recession drama about coldhearted profiteering that gets your dander up. 99 Homes is where the heart isn't.
