I'm a huge fan of filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, and I found his latest offering a searing and powerful film. Set in Florida, in 2010, at the height of the foreclosure crisis and the Great Recession, this can be a most difficult movie to watch at times, not only due to the heart- rending subject matter, but also due to Bahrani's incredible way of presenting the stark reality of the human condition and human behavior.
The superb actor Michael Shannon is perfectly cast as Rick Carver, the corrupt and cold-hearted real estate broker, who for the past three years has been getting rich by specializing in the foreclosure field. Unfortunately, many of his tactics including documentation fraud, and the short shrift given to homeowners in the courts, are not fiction but have been freely documented in the past.
Another fine actor Andrew Garfield co-stars as Dennis Nash, a financially struggling construction worker who's being evicted by Carver from his childhood home, along with his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and his young son Connor (Noah Lomax). In his desperation to save his home, he ends up taking a job from Carver, which will propel him into Carver's sleazy and corrupt world. It will all spiral down into a most dramatic finale.
In summary, director Bahrani and co-writer Amir Naderi, and led by the performances of Shannon and Garfield, have given us another very strong drama, difficult to watch at times, but, in my opinion, definitely worth staying with.
The superb actor Michael Shannon is perfectly cast as Rick Carver, the corrupt and cold-hearted real estate broker, who for the past three years has been getting rich by specializing in the foreclosure field. Unfortunately, many of his tactics including documentation fraud, and the short shrift given to homeowners in the courts, are not fiction but have been freely documented in the past.
Another fine actor Andrew Garfield co-stars as Dennis Nash, a financially struggling construction worker who's being evicted by Carver from his childhood home, along with his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and his young son Connor (Noah Lomax). In his desperation to save his home, he ends up taking a job from Carver, which will propel him into Carver's sleazy and corrupt world. It will all spiral down into a most dramatic finale.
In summary, director Bahrani and co-writer Amir Naderi, and led by the performances of Shannon and Garfield, have given us another very strong drama, difficult to watch at times, but, in my opinion, definitely worth staying with.