Director: Neil LaBute
Red herrings and embarrassing music choices aside, In The Company of Men is a powerful film. It's not hard to see why Neil LaBute was considered talented, and also not hard to see how he ended up remaking The Wicker Man several years later, to disastrous results. I'm too lazy to look this up, but I suspect this was a play first, as it has several monologues and the camera stays static for most of the film. It leads to little things like line misreadings being left in the film because there are very long takes - I find those things can make a film more realistic.
I suspect this was Aaron Eckhart's career making performance - he absolutely nails it. Everyone knows someone like Eckhart's Chad - he's an outsized version of a certain type of person that any suburban-raised American knows. It's a brutal look at the corporate mentality and how that mindset can warp interpersonal relations.
Eckhart is so perfect in this, and then as the same type in Thank You For Smoking, that I don't find him believable playing characters who are supposed to be decent.
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