99 Homes

In his meatiest role since 2009’s Boy A (he wasn’t too shabby in the gritty made-for-TV thriller Red Riding either), Andrew Garfield shows that he’s game for more than Spidey suits in this stirring credit crunch drama.

Good guy Dennis Nash (Garfield) is a carpenter struggling to keep up payments on his Florida family home, which houses his son (Noah Lomax) and mother (Dern). When he loses his job and the bank foreclose, the sheriff’s department turn up with a notice of eviction; Rick Carver (Shannon) is in attendance, a cut-throat real estate agent who specialises in buying these cheap houses only to quickly flip them. Through an unlikely turn of events, Carver employs Nash first as a handyman and then as his right hand, teaching him the ropes. Initially reluctant to toss people into the street, the serious money allows Nash to earn enough to buy his house back …

Bahrani lets the story follow the same trajectory of Wall Street – the shady mentor in a morally-reprehensible business, the green protégé who eventually sees the error of his ways – and mixes it with some earthy Pursuit of Happyness financial straits. 99 Homes is at its best when Bahrani explores the lives of the desperate, and the financial worry is palpable. The burden to make ends meet is etched onto Garfield’s pained face and on the faces of those who have lost their homes during an outstanding eviction montage. The sight of an elderly man sitting on a lawn not knowing what to do or where to go now is one of the most stirring moments of the year.

Where the film can be accused of pushing some easy emotional buttons, Bahrani muddies the waters somewhat by painting those helping Carver evict people first as bottom-feeders before he flips it: when Nash becomes one of them, we sympathise with his plight, forcing us to rewind and see those ‘scum’ as who they really are: people equally in dire straits. If only the writer-director afforded the same depth to his villain.

That Nash is employed by the man who profits from his eviction isn’t the misstep here: it’s that Rick Carver is too cut-and-dry. Bahrani makes overtures to humanise this parasite in a grand speech where he unloads about his father working all his life only to be screwed over by The Man. To help along his justification for his position in this world, Carver baldly deconstructs the reasons behind the property bubble (careless homeowners asking for unnecessary loans, greedy bankers giving it to them, an uncaring government backing them up). Like his Gekko-esque Dickensian name, Carver is a touch on the easy/expected side.

But Michael Shannon gives Carver an edge. With his imposing frame, darting eyes and perma-grimace, Shannon keeps the rage and frustration twitching under the surface; when he gives his big justification speech, he stands over Garfield, mouth aquiver, begging Garfield to disagree. His ferocious performance dovetails nicely with Garfield’s introspective turn.