Pros: Fine performances, an ingenious screenplay; strange, effective music and sound effects.
Cons: A distant camera, shallow story and lack of emotional warmth destroy the film.
The Bottom Line: Most Hollywood films of this type suffer from a failure of nerve, the unbelievable change of heart, the tacked on happy ending. This film goes cynically to the other extreme.
I feel like the man who stepped in a particularly nasty kind of quicksand, thinking it was butterscotch pudding. When I was asked to read a couple of reviews of IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, I had not seen it; I did not intend to see it. In the sorry aftermath, I have felt it necessary to subject myself to watching it. IN THE COMPANY OF MEN is neither a particularly good film nor is it pleasant to watch.
I shall not spend much time with it.
Aaron Eckhart (much different in ERIN BROCKOVICH) plays Chad, who, at the beginning film, sets up for destruction Howard (Matt Malloy), his project boss, on a business trip to a district office in a small Midwestern city, like Fort Wayne, Indiana (where THE COMPANY OF MEN was filmed).
Chad and Howard attended the same college, separated only by a semester in graduation. Chad knows Howard is an uncertain, homely, slightly overweight, neurotic, unhappy fellow, who does not understand women, and who has the beginnings of what is now called in business "a history of sexual harassment."
From before the opening credits, when we hear the raw jazz of the score by Ken Williams and Karel Roessington, we realize we are entering the jungle of The New World (American) Order.
Handsome, glib Chad falls somewhere in that long line of dubious American anti-heroes, such as the reporter (Kirk Douglas) in ACE IN THE HOLE (Wilder, 1951), Richard Gere's Julian Kay in AMERICAN GIGOLO (Shrader, 1980), or most recently Patrick Bateman in AMERICAN PSYCHO (Harron, 2000). Chad will take advantage of anything or anyone to fill the void in his egotistical, empty, shallow, materialistic life. Unlike the psychotic Bateman, Chad is a perfectly legal, ambiguous representation of the new Urban American Male. He hates his work, he hates his colleagues, he hates women.
As Howard puts it for him: "Everything. Work. Women. They're all getting out of hand."
In particular, Chad hates his "friend" Howard, who he feels has gotten an unfair promotion advantage, simply because of a quirk in the Company seniority system.
"Never lose control. It is the key to the Universe," Chad says.
From the opening long shot, we are observing a pair of small, tortured, venomous reptiles, as if they were in a tank. The sound stage by Tony and George Moskal reinforces the zoological metaphor.
Both Chad and Howard, ten years out of school, feel that the new business paradigm has already pushed them off the escalator to senior management. In order to displace Howard in the Company, Chad lures him, using their mutual need to control, into a mean scheme of misogny.
The catalyst and target of opportunity is a permanent party stenographer named Christine (Stacy Edwards). She is a pretty, conscientious young woman, who suffers from a hearing deficit. Chad proposes they both pretend to pursue her, revenge themselves, relieve the tedium of their stay in a jerk water little town, and then dump her.
Chad understands in a utilitarian way that Christine will be both flattered by, and sensitive to, the lonely attention of two outsiders like himself and Howard. What better vessel to control, debauch and discard -- while using her as an instrument to remove a foolish rival from his path!
The scheme is dramatized by the awkward use of titles announcing each week of their six week sojourn. (The device, in addition to emphasizing the stylized cruelty of the plot, has the effect of bringing any dramatic or emotional involvement to a halt every 15 minutes or so.) By week 2, Howard already has awkwardly asked out the wrong girl, and news of his curious pursuit is floating about the junior executives, interns and stenography pool.
In the average office, a cardinal rule is that management does not date the help. It hampers efficiency, causes jealousy, and often leads to bad feelings. Occasionally, nowadays, it leads to worse. (Stick close to your local news on TV.) The ones who violate this rule are the stupid, the innocent, the heartless, the disturbed or those with some power. Our trio covers those bases.
The nervous Howard falls falteringly in love with Christine, causing him to confuse his feelings with details of the scheme in a series of misunderstandings and damaging small lies, while charismatic Chad soft talks her, declares love, and goes to bed with her by Week 5.
Meanwhile, Chad is also sabotaging his pal, partner and superior at every turn. He encourages Howard to unfairly discipline or mis-assign minor employees on whom the success of their project depends. He reads out and humiliates defenseless subordinates in Howard's name. He deep sixes drafts of The Big Report. He carefully creates a record of Howard's incompetence in the Company's business history, and a trail of what looks like sexual harrassment in Howard's personal life.
Chad, of course, is bedding Christine in hapless Howard's hotel room down the hall from his own.
Christine, for her part, at first, feels sorry for both Chad and Howard. Chad's attractiveness increases inversely as the ineptness of Howard's suit becomes more troublesome. She is indeed destroyed emotionally by Chad's cruel lies.
"I shall not be able to hear you when you lie to me," she jokes to foolish Howard, to relieve the tension on an outing.
In the end, she is not able "to hear him" when Howard tries to tell her the truth.
I found IN THE COMPANY OF MEN a small, unpleasant film. The existential suggestion that a smalltime fascist like Chad is the Superman in our future was unsettling (perhaps because it is true). Howard represented our business past, the minor exec who used to work his way up to division head, a gold Cross pen and pencil, and a sexy secretary on the side. That his kind may be too soft, passe, did not impress me, and his failure did not involve me because it arose mainly from his naivete and stupidity, not from any virtue on his part. Christine I cared for out of her loss, courage and kindness, but Writer/ Director Neil La Bute left me with an impression that her scarcely developed character was there only as a small animal to be tortured in the advance of his cold, clever screenplay.
Claude Chabrol did it much better 40 years ago in THE COUSINS. (He has been doing it better ever since.)
Chad (Aaron Eckhart), furious about the way women are ruining his man s world, enlists his wishy-washy co-worker (Matt Malloy) in a callous plan to da...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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