By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Ramin Bahrani
Starring: Andrew Garfield | Laura Dern | Michael Shannon | Noah Lomax | Tim Guinee
Country: united_states
Year: 2015
Running time: 112
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2891174/reference
Chris says: “It’s no surprise that it took so long for someone to dramatize the housing mortgage crisis that brought on the 2008 recession. Although many were impacted, it’s not the most interesting subject matter for a film, unless perhaps you stumble upon it while making a documentary (THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES. Ramin Bahrani (CHOP SHOP, GOODBYE SOLO seems like an ideal director for this kind of story, and he doesn’t flub the task: 99 HOMES is remarkably honest for a crisis-of-conscience thriller: it doesn’t sugarcoat the harsh realities of eviction notices and lives traumatized and upended by sudden loss of property.
“Early in the film, Dennis (Andrew Garfield), an Orlando construction worker and single father gets evicted from his longtime family home along with his mother (Laura Dern) and young son (Noah Lomax). The process of moving all their belongings out to the front sidewalk is harrowing to watch, as is their settling into a low-rent motel packed with other families who have recently gone through the same thing. In a series of circumstances that you’d only find in a movie, Dennis eventually begins working for Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), the sketchy real estate broker who had seized his property. With time, Dennis finds himself on the other side of the door, serving eviction notices to unfortunate homeowners while reaping the not-entirely-legal rewards Carver guides him towards. Personal consequences soon weigh heavily on Dennis, forcing him to question the morality of his actions. It’s a trajectory as old as the hills, straight out of a ‘50s melodrama/thriller, but made palatable by its relevance and by the script’s laser-sharp focus on the growing conflict between Dennis and Rick, resolved in a great final scene that keeps the narrative’s integrity intact.
“Garfield reminds us he’s actually a gifted young actor and not just the latest comic book adaptation hero, while Shannon is predictably great as an admirably cunning sleaze ball whom, sleaze aside, knows what he’s talking about. His amazing speech on justifying his practices to Dennis is chilling in its blunt, unapologetic plain-spokenness. Despite the good-and-evil setup, you feel like you’re watching flesh-and-blood characters and this extends to nearly the whole cast. These attributes nearly make up for a slickness present here that was absent in Bahrani’s neorealism-influenced earlier features (I haven’t seen his much-derided last film, AT ANY PRICE, which I suspect is stylistically closer to this). The distracting, heavy-handed score is also a debit, but ultimately a minor one: 99 HOMES gets so much right and has such a powerful, vindicating conclusion that it could end up the definitive word on the socio-economical cost of the ongoing dilemma it depicts. 4.5 cats
“(99 HOMES screened at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.)”
Kyle says: “Director Ramin Bahrani should be encouraged and shows great promise, but 99 HOMES is like an overstuffed delicatessen sandwich with so many repetitive ingredients that chewing boredom sets in and never really departs. Special screenings sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center for patrons are almost always so high-energy and self-congratulatory that it was quite surprising for applause at the end titles to be so tepid. In addition, at the cocktail party afterward I was able to circulate easily among the guests, but could not find anyone actually talking about what they had just seen. That is a worrying sign for a film that requires vigorous positive word of mouth to persuade audiences they should sit through two hours of members of
the middle class being cheated by banking and real estate moguls, and evicted from their homes. This is an actual horror movie about the evils of capitalism, rampant income inequality, and criminal manipulation of the U.S. legal system — all of its story lines and details thoroughly researched and totally true, according to director Bahrani. ‘KILL BANKERS’ is written on the wall of one home in eviction proceedings, presumably by the person who has blocked sewage removal machinery. But later the chief manipulator of laws and loopholes says, ‘Congratulations: You just fucked the government.’
“Fortunately there is Andrew Garfield to provide dramatic focus when it is truly needed. Those who saw his brilliant performance as Biff in the 2012 Broadway revival of DEATH OF A SALESMAN are familiar with his ability to develop tortured vulnerability. Garfield’s creation of moment-to-moment reality in movies such as THE SOCIAL NETWORK, NEVER LET ME GO (2010) and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012 and 2014) confirms that he is one of the finest actors of his generation. His work on THE SOCIAL NETWORK was widely praised and received many awards, but even as Spider-Man he is able to find moments of doubt and anguish, bringingmultiple dimensions to a cartoon character.
“Watch his eyes. Andrew Garfield is first the bewildered father and working class victim, in a wounded fog about his inability to handle the crisis of his family and belongings put out onto the lawn. Then he is the personification of a provider agonizingly feeling his way, pursuing the dream of getting back his family home. Next he is the proud businessman who has figured out how to buy his mother and son a better home, which they do not want. Garfield clearly registers the pride and pleasure of a father with the resources to do cool things with and for his son. Finally he is called upon to make an immense sacrifice as the sole moral authority in a thicket of nastiness. When his character confesses to a father who has run out of every option except murder — ‘I cheated you’ — the devastating pain of the moment has been totally earned by Garfield as an actor. It is a memorable job that needs a better home. 3.5 cats
“Tuesday, September 15, 2015, at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York”
Michael responds: “Interesting take, Kyle. I saw 99 HOMES at the Provincetown International Film Festival in June, and it was my favorite film of the festival. This was one of the most well-constructed thrillers I’ve seen in a long time. But it’s a cerebral thriller, although one that hits the heart hard. Andrew Garfield’s character is put in a near impossible position, and while he sets his morals aside to survive, they’re never very far. It reminded me somewhat of A SEPARATION, in its moral challenges, and I loved the acting, and found the screenplay to be incredibly well constructed. 5 cats”
Jason says: “If THE BIG SHORT is the movie that explained the mortgage crisis which would define the early years of the twenty-first century, 99 HOMES is the one that chronicles what it’s like on the ground. Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani does an excellent job of tying the two perspectives found there together, building a movie that really claws at its viewers.
“The most sympathetic and sadly common perspective belongs to Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), a construction worker and single father not only far enough behind on his mortgage that he’s facing eviction from his family home, but seeing a site he’s been working at abandoned without his getting paid. The man pushing him out of his house is Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), a real estate broker focused on acquiring houses cheap and flipping them quickly, and not averse to cutting corners or engaging in a bit of fraud while doing it. When Nash goes to try and get some tools he thought was stolen during his eviction back, Carver takes note of the guy and offers him a bit of work; then, impressed by Nash’s determination, winds up giving him more responsibility.
“Nash slides very believably from victim to complicit as he tries to recover his foreclosed house, in large part thanks to the work of actor Andrew Garfield. ‘Regular guy’ is a deceptively difficult thing to pull off, but Garfield projects a simple friendliness that doesn’t require overt attempts to charm the audience or particularly pointed acts against him to gain a viewer’s empathy; he just seems to put a little bit more than the script decides in every scene. That’s why his inching toward the dark side seems so easy to accept: He seems motivated enough to be pragmatic, and from there it’s a believably short step to breaking a few rules if that’s what gets him back in his family home. Garfield makes Nash seem true to himself whether or not the next step seems to torture him, and the way he plays off Laura Dern (as his mother) and Noah Lomax (as his son) creates a tether that the audience can hold on to even when they’re nervous about the direction he’s moving.
“Michael Shannon almost goes too far in the other direction as Carver. His villain instincts are among the best in the business, almost too good at times, because he knows that audiences seldom want a bland antagonist. Initially, he seems to be going too far in that direction, making Carver too entertainingly colorful, but eventually finds a spot where his actions and personality seem to be at a more human scale. His corruption becomes easy to take for granted, thus very easy to see spreading to his new assistant.
“I was never a particular faN of filmmaker Ramin Bahrani’s earlier films, which always struck me as overemphasizing realism without telling an interesting story, but he seems to be striking a much more interesting balance here, with every character’s actions alway believable – and different as days and weeks pass – but always in service of making us want to know what will happen next. Bahrani and co-writers Amir Naderi and Bahareh Azimi still maintain the spirit of the earlier fly-on-a-wall productions; the side characters and the evictees have the ring of truth in their stories, and even the ones whose situations are dramatic and aligned enough with the story to advance the plot feel drawn fairly directly from reality.
“That’s what Bahrani has always done, and though doing it with more famous actors smooths otu some of the edges, he hasn’t lost his eye for a good story. 99 HOMES doesn’t quiver with anger the way some stories about the economic meltdown do, but that’s never been Bahrani’s thing, and telling a story about people dealing with things rather than raging has just as much impact. 4.5 cats
“Seen 22 January 2016 at the Brattle Theatre ([Some of] the Best of 2015, DCP)”