Best movie of this year hands down!

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Indeed. And tough indeed. The story of excellent employees and even executive cadres that are suddenly fired because their work is subjected to the directions and tendencies of the markets that rule the companies successes or failures. People don't count at all. What counts are numbers and figures on excel reports. This is shown in this movie with truly realistic authenticity through short meaningful sequences of images, action and dialogues. The salary compensations and a few savings are spent fast. Then the fired workers cannot pay the house mortgage anymore and lose the house or they must sell it for a low price then they must sell their cars as well and they must go to live with their parents (if they still have them). When they have kids the tragedy becomes greater. They keep knocking at closed doors trying unsuccessfully to get a new job. Human relations (especially at home) get deteriorated sometimes. It ends in suicide in some cases. This movie shows a reality of our neo-liberal times and must be seen by all means since it was on of the best movies made on that year, well acted and well directed.

The Film is Concerned that Corporate Company Men are People. They are but should You Care a whole lot. The Movie sure does. "Corporations are People"...The Supreme Court. Bunk. Corporations are made up of People but are Not People. There is a Big Difference. It Should be Obvious that Corporations have No Heart and They have No Soul. You can't do a Transplant or a Lobotomy on a Corporation and they Cannot Procreate. Yes They can Multiply like a Single Cell, so it is More Accurate to call them an Organism, but Certainly NOT PEOPLE.So here it is, the Top of the Pile, the Peak of the Heap. Are They Interesting? No. They are One Dimensional, Boring, and Whiny, Greedy, Selfish Hunks of Flesh. Talk about Your Useless Eaters. But You're Suppose to become Engaged with these "Folks" and Care about the Fact that They are Losing Their Mansions and Porsches and might have to get Real Jobs.Not so much. It is Difficult to Empathize with the Characters and although some Show Signs of Humanity, so what? As an Entertainment or an Enlightenment, this Movie Leaves a lot to be Desired. It is Flat, Uninteresting, and with Very Little Insight to the Machinations or Personalities for that Matter of what's being Fictionalized up there on the screen.Overall, a Wasted Effort, with Perhaps Noble Intentions, but as a Work of Art it is Bland, Shallow, and the Movie's Tag Line is a Precursor of the Inanities to Follow..."We gave our lives to our jobs…Now it is time to take them back." Is the Writer of that bit of Nonsensical Tripe now in the Unemployment Line?

This film is a brutally accurate portrayal of a major social crisis, the gradual elimination of the middle class, closing and moving plants to low wage countries and ruthless business practices which are more about satisfying the stockholders than pleasing the customers. It's really very good and very graphic. But! Mainstream movies ultimately are made to attract audiences and make money. Nobody who has been laid off or who fears being laid off or "downsized" would want to see this. I'm retired and don't face those pressures any more. Yet even I was thoroughly depressed watching this film. It is grim, realistic, cruel stuff without a single humorous scene or funny line. That may make it a meaningful social document. But it also guarantees a box office flop.

John Wells' The Company Men is the first film I've seen since Jacob Aaron Estes' The Details that makes a bold, commendable attempt at penetrating the interworkings of the male psyche. It shows diminishing feelings of a male's self worth and value after being fired from his job, using the 2007-08 economic crisis in the United States as the backdrop for this story. Considering how timely and significant this material is, it's unfortunate how forgotten and ignored this film is.The film follows the impact the crisis had on the fictional, multi-billion dollar business Global Transportation Systems ("GTX"), which is facing large and prolific downsizing after the market plummets. One of the men let go is Bob Walker (Ben Affleck), a responsible marketing agent who is used to driving to his beautifully furnished office in his silver Porsche five days a week before coming home to his wife and two children. At first, while upset, he is confident that he'll be employed and his six-figure salary reinstated at another white-collar firm. It is after weeks of applying, making phone calls, and lurking at an employment agency with little success or movement that he realizes just how poorly the U.S. economy is and how low ones self-worth can go after being the victim of downsizing.Meanwhile, the company CEO James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) has little suffering, but almost every employee is left to fend for themselves in some way, shape, or form. Bob looks to his longtime friend and coworker Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) for assistance, but finds he is struggling to keep his head above water as well. Finally, when all hope is lost, Bob reluctantly accepts a position hanging drywall with his brother-in-law Jack Dolan (Kevin Costner), who already views him as privileged and slightly ungrateful. This offers a relativistic moment in both Bob and Jack's life as they each wear each others shoes for a little while. Jack can see that while Bob is a mediocre carpenter, his heart was always in the right place and he was good at the white-collar work he did. Bob, on the other-hand, gets a greater experience, which is to see his brother-in-law as a man loyal to his job, as many working class and lower-middle class family-men are.These kinds of moments are the moments I live for in film - when two parties recognize another person's way of life or begin to accept and understand their peers without such a close-minded view of one another. Not to mention, Wells - who also serves as writer - does a nice job at showing the effect the loss of a six-figure income has on a family. Several cutbacks are made, less entertainment is had, and life becomes a day-to-day challenge rather than a fast-moving, leisurely exercise. Wells is careful to not make the cutbacks seem overwhelming and unrealistic (IE: making the entire Walker family live out of their car or on the street), but he makes them more close-to-home and believable - seeing Bob's Porsche get repossessed is surprisingly heartbreaking.This leads to what the film is trying to show, which is crudely but wisely dubbed "male vanity." The term is just what it sounds like; the encompassing thought of feeling macho and being the sole source of life in a family. Bob isn't a man drenched in full-blown vain, however, he's used to being the breadwinner of the family, and when that title, responsibility, and its privileges are revoked without the company of a pink-slip, Bob is like a superhero without superpowers. Overtime he feels vulnerable, weak, and an unworthy man of the house. Wells makes this feeling accessible to us, the audience member, by giving us a look into a typical suburban family that had it all and lost it and the people on top who walked away mostly unburdened. The film's tagline, "In America, we give our lives to our jobs; it's time to take them back" bluntly states this and makes one recount their own job, whether it be a nurse or a retail worker.Ben Affleck gives a strong performance here, embodying the commonality, the strength, and the present weaknesses of an upper-middle class suit. Affleck is one of the strongest actors in the business today in my opinion, diverse, a terrific presence in all of his films, witty, and very, very relatable. Accompanied by the likes of Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Maria Bello - all of whom are on top of their came - he can do no wrong.The Company Men not only humanizes the white collar world, but provides us with a timely humanization of the world and a look into the effects the financial crisis left far too many Americans.Starring: Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt, Maria Bello, and Craig T. Nelson. Directed by: John Wells.