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In a desperate move to secure a huge contract, Carver forges papers for foreclosure proceedings against a family Dennis knows personally. Features a gut wrenching eviction scene that establishes the tone for the rest of the film. It's the stuff they don't show you on reality flip shows, the personal, tragic side of foreclosure. Andrew Garfield, as a man who has "failed" in his duty as protector and provider, has an almost constant sense of panic throughout, catching his breath in his throat, his posture tight and alert.
When the only reward for hard-work is poverty (as is the case for an astronomic amount of blue-collar Americans), corruption and scam seem like primal survival skills. Such an economy, it’s worth pointing out, is not kept by the people who make, but rather moved by those who know what, when, where and from whom to take. He was great as General Zod in Man of Steel and he is excellent in this movie as an opportunistic foreclosure specialist in the REO industry. On the other hand, Andrew Garfield's performance was shaky at best, because it seemed like he was trying to hard. Laura Dern plays a lesser character in the movie, but should have been given a greater role and more depth to her character. As troubling as it sounds, some of the best scenes of the film are when people are evicted from their homes.
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For the most part, character-driven directors find it difficult to give all creative energy to their actors, especially after building up a filmography that shows his obsession with leading his main men. But with an actor like Shannon, one of the most confident and reliable actors working today, Bahrani needs not have this fear of relinquishing control of character development. In fact, Shannon's understanding of Carver's journey and discreet choices of dialogue, begs the question if Bahrani could have achieved this character development on his own. Andrew Garfield is Dennis Nash, an unemployed construction worker living with his son and his mom, played by Laura Dern. When Dennis goes to see Rick to get back his confiscated tools, Rick surprises him.
He's great at playing antagonistic characters but in this case its almost impossible to have any sympathy for his character. The film never bored me, in fact I was engaged throughout the story, but I think at times it just became too unrealistic. Dennis Nash lives in Orlando, Florida with his mother Lynn and son Connor. He's a single dad struggling to get by with his construction job when the housing crash takes the last bit away from him.
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The filmmaker, whose adamant cinematic attitude is almost non-apologetic on-screen, choosing to highlight a truly sad time in American history. Bahrani’s protagonist is Dennis Nash, played wonderfully by Andrew Garfield. Holding his own against a larger than life acting force that is Shannon, Garfield’s Nash allows himself to feed off Carver’s greed and sinisterly convincing monologues with scenes of heart-wrenching grit and sensitivity. Would a person as canny as Carver really take on someone as essentially decent as Dennis seems to be? The filmmakers want to make the point that Carver believes money is the ultimate motivator for everyone, but as a longtime manipulator, he has to know that different people have different keys. For some reason, even after working for Rick for quite a while and making a ton of money, Dennis is still living in the sleaze bag motel where it seems all of Rick's victims end up .
When Dennis brings his mother and son to the luxurious house and informs them he bought it and sold their old house so they could get out of the motel room immediately, his mother does not believe at first that he has bought the house. Then Dennis' mother is shocked by the loss of their long-time home and is repelled as she realizes Dennis got his new-found wealth by helping Rick victimize vulnerable homeowners who have financial problems. Connor is also unhappy with the arrangement and sides with his grandmother as they leave Dennis to stay with her brother. Meanwhile, an evicted homeowner living in the same motel as Dennis and his family recognizes and threatens him. He denies knowing the man, but his mother and son are suspicious of how he's making money.
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Directed and co-written by Ramin Bahrani, 99 Homes is a dreary story worth telling, unfolding through realistic, powerful acting all around. Perhaps it's this merging of the classical and modern that makes the movie work so well -- or maybe it's the impressive performances. Shannon has rarely been used so well, with his sinister, snaky countenance and his weird charm crossing paths. Certain moments beautifully capture a kind of short-of-breath panic and others a kind of sickening elation, but all of it is remarkably immediate -- and remarkably human.
He delivers yet another great performance here as a man struggling to provide for his family. Laura Dern is also great as Garfield's mother in the film. That water stain would have leached right through that "mud" and 99 to 1 that paint isn't going to match, even if it's the same color as the age old paint on the ceiling.
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As most kids after high school, I didn't have a plan for myself and college was my only option. I was lucky enough to get a good job at a grocery store that will be able to support me though college. Even though I had my differences with my hometown, growing up in one of the richest towns in Michigan had it's perks also. It's so hard and heartbreaking to watch Dennis not have money or a name to himself.
By making both Carver and Nash profoundly human — with all the flaws that condition entails — Bahrani forces his audience to realize the degrading agony that has resulted from the real estate meltdown. She’s wary of returning to the house they were evicted from, and reacts in horror when she realizes the means Nash used to purchase a luxurious new replacement for it. Nash, who wants to make enough money to get his own dwelling back, works without compunction.
The movie is set in Orlando, Florida, with some of the biggest houses on the street sitting next to the smallest houses where the evictions happen. It is such an accurate image again of how different the concept "money" is for everyone. Some people are set for life where others are living paycheck to paycheck. Garfield's character's arc was in particular the most unbalanced. It took a lot for me to get passed the fact that he gets hired by the same guy who evicted his home, but the actors made it intriguing enough for me to push it off to the side for awhile. But when you continue to build Garfield's character up to places that just aren't believable, it can take you out of the film.
Dennis goes to argue over stolen tools during the eviction and Rick recruits him into his company. Rick runs scams to steal from the vacant homes to get reimbursed by the government or the banks. Dennis' morality is muddled as he desperately tries to get his home back. I'm a huge fan of filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, and I found his latest offering a searing and powerful film. Dennis checks his family into a seedy downtown hotel crowded with other evicted families who have been living there for months, and even years.
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. 99 Homes begins, the newly unemployed construction worker Dennis has missed just enough mortgage payments to land him in a rudimentary court hearing right around the same time that Carver shows up. The pace of these proceedings is startling, certainly speedier than Dennis or his mom expected. In a couple of minutes, they've got their belongings on the front lawn; a couple of hours later, they've loaded as much as they can into his pickup truck and moved into a motel down the road. The ending is quite predictable but the film keeps those watching interesting in what will happen next. An unemployed father loses his home through a foreclosure but soon he starts working for real estate agent Rick Carver who just happens to be the man who evicted him from his home.
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