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Monday, June 5, 2017

In the Company of Men (1997)

Director: Neil LaBute
Writer(s): LaBute, based on his own play.
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Matt Malloy, and Stacy Edwards


There are very few films as endlessly bleak and mean-spirited as Neil Labute’s In the Company of Men, and that is probably a good thing. It takes a simple idea, and turns it into a mechanism for horror; underneath its façade as a black comedy (and I must confess, it is frequently very funny), it almost plays out like a psychological thriller. By the end, there is nary a life that isn’t ruined; of course the only one virtually unscathed is the one that deserves it the most. It is human nature at its most primitive, and although it’s not a film that anyone short of a sociopath can truly “enjoy”, it still makes for riveting, original cinema.

Aaron Eckhart plays Chad, a business executive who is recently going through the breakup of a long-term girlfriend. So too is Howard (Matt Malloy), his friend since college, and current colleague. Chad is clearly a misogynist; the type of person that gives all business executives a bad name. He’s cocky, arrogant, rude, and vicious, and those are some of his better traits. Howard is about the only person who seems to be free from being the target of his attacks.

The two of them are taking a six-week business trip to a different office, when Chad suddenly concocts a terrible idea: to make themselves feel better, why don’t they find the most innocent woman that they can, preferably one who has no self-esteem, spend the next six weeks buttering her up, and then both just dump her out of the blue. Howard is hesitant to agree, but at the insistence of Chad, he finally relents. After all, you never want to be on the bad side of a guy like Chad, and sometimes that means going along with him when everything within you is telling you not to. Now all they need is a victim.

The first day at their new office, Chad requests the help of a woman in a cubicle who is wearing headphones, and refuses to acknowledge his presence. He thinks this is rather rude, but upon discussing it with another worker, discovers that her disrespect was involuntary: she is completely deaf. The moment he hears this, he knows what we already did—that they have found just the kind of person they were looking for.

And so, over the course of the next six weeks, Chad and Howard take turns dating Christine. She, of course, does not know that the two of them even know each other, much less that they are in cahoots with one another to destroy her life. Chad, being the arrogant SOB that he is, is naturally smoother with the ladies, and so he is the one that Christine is the most smitten with. Yet it’s Howard—poor, bumbling, rambling, awkward idiot Howard—that begins to have feelings for Christine, which clearly aren’t reciprocated. That’s when the whole situation becomes a powder keg threatening to explode at any moment, where even the slightest action can set off a chain reaction of events that could ruin all of their lives.

In the Company of Men appears to be very straightforward at first, but the story weaves along, throwing in a surprising number of subtle twists and turns. It’s always refreshing to see a movie that I can’t completely figure out within the first few minutes, and this was one of them—I had no idea how it would end, until it ended. I won’t reveal specifics, but let’s just say for anyone that was hoping the film would, against the odds, present us with some sort of happy ending, will be ever so sorely disappointed. But as bleak and as depressing as the ending is, the most disturbing truth is that it’s also the most in step with human nature.

The acting is uniformly superb across the boards: to simply pay attention to Aaron Eckhart’s excellent performance, while casting off the rest, is to undermine equally effective roles by Stacy Martin (as Christine, the deaf victim), and Matt Malloy. It’s true that Malloy’s character is probably the most straightforward—he spends a large portion of the movie simply taking orders from Chad and looking hesitant and sad—but he has moments of sudden anger that hint there may be a sociopath lurking just under the surface, and the effect is chilling.

In the Company of Men is an outstanding debut film from Neil LaBute, who would go on to helm some Hollywood fare, as well as plays, over the next few years. Many have come to blast his misanthropic view of the world, which was only heightened over his later works, with critic David Kimmel citing: “Neil LaBute is a misanthrope who assumes that only callous and evil people who use and abuse others can survive in this world.” Unfortunately, all it takes is a quick glance of the real-life world around us to see that he is right.

RECAP: Endlessly bleak and depressing, In the Company of Men, which was adapted into a movie from Neil LaBute’s own play, is nevertheless an audacious, one-of-a-kind work that still somehow manages to elicit occasional laughs. It’s the exact opposite of a feel-good movie, but for those that might be sick of “happy endings” (in a cinematic sense) or manufactured Hollywood works that pander to their audiences, this thought-provoking work might be just the ticket.

RATING: 8/10

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