99 Homes

99 Homes (15)

USA 2014 112 mins Dir: Ramin Bahrani Cast: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern

Part horrifying expose of the cutthroat world of American real estate, part Faustian morality tale, 99 Homes begins with a burst of impassioned anger and never lets go. Director Ramin Bahrani’s latest clear-eyed project isn’t a horror movie but few could claim to come away from it unnerved.

Andrew Garfield (back on meatier dramatic ground following the somewhat unremarkable Spider-Man movies) plays young single father Dennis Nash. At the start of the movie, Dennis has fallen into arrears with the bank and is told that his Florida family home will be repossessed, a place where he lives with his hairdresser mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and son Connor (Noah Lomax). Taking at face value the judge’s claim that he has 30 days to launch an appeal, Nash is understandably horrified and discombobulated when, the very next day, shark-like real estate broker Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) turns up and informs him that he has two minutes to vacate the property.

A dizzying, alarming sequence then ensues with Bahrani’s urgent, pacy camerawork brilliantly conveying the stomach-turning upset of the situation. With Nash, Lynn and Connor thrown out of their home and being forced to shack up in a drab motel with other families in exactly the same position, the movie’s central theme becomes clear: take away a person’s home and you don’t just remove the roof over their heads; you also remove an essential element of their humanity. A repeated mantra in the movie, spoken by Shannon’s reptilian character, is ‘Don’t get emotional about real estate.’ Watching the movie, audiences will no doubt find that a tough sentiment to buy into.

However, the real gut-wrenching moment occurs when, in a bitterly ironic twist of fate, Nash is compelled to go and work for his nemesis in order to make ends meet, ultimately helping Carver to throw people out of their homes in the manner with which it was done to him. Is it right for a decent person to essentially sell their soul to the devil in order to put food on the family table? Watching the otherwise upstanding Dennis’ moral degradation makes the movie a tough, albeit compelling, watch.

Yet Chop Shop filmmaker Bahrani isn’t so glib as to create a world comprised of pure heroes and pantomime villains. As Carver points out, he is the product of a system that has been allowed to engulf America, one that encourages winners and spits losers out onto the sidewalk. Carver just happens to be on the ‘right’ – or perhaps fortunate – side where he can exploit other people’s weaknesses for his own gain. It’s testament to Shannon’s typically electrifying performance that Carver, repulsive as he is, also remains a compelling and fascinating figure, one whose amorality is both enticing and frightening. Matching him every step of the way is Garfield whose innate sensitivity as an actor (so well exploited in the likes of Boy A, Never Let Me Go and The Social Network) makes Dennis’ moral crisis genuinely upsetting to watch. Also worthy of mention is Dern’s unshowy performance as Lynn, whose carefully augmented close-ups gradually encapsulate the anxiety of the situation.

With the sickeningly abhorrent Florida equality gap becoming in Bahrani’s hands some sort of sun-dappled Hadean inferno, this is a movie with a clear-sighted polemical agenda that just stops short of hectoring. If the last few moments are perhaps slightly more contrived than what’s come before, they do encapsulate the movie’s chilling message: in 21st century America, decency and corruption go hand in hand.