99 Homes

The more imperfect, the more urgent the movie is, which manages to get under your skin with its uncompromising rawness like few others. Together with Margin Call and Big Short, they form a free trilogy "Everything you ever wanted to know about the financial crisis, but were too afraid to ask." The former approaches events from the point of view of the chamber drama of one night in bank management, the approach of the second one is broad and based on economic perspective but in entertaining way and at the same time with a naturalistic "bottom-top" view of (future) Trump voters. Although it is clear who the creators are messing with, neither side is demonized (until the ending, but more on that later). It was a vicious circle, where the irresponsible people are to blame, people who naively (often for the sake of buying stupid things) pledged their houses in times of apparent prosperity, but financial institutions that lent irresponsibly beyond their / clients' possibilities having in mind only quick profit are to blame equally. One led to another and vice versa. So Shannon is not playing a black-and-white villain, but a pragmatic tempter (he will not strangle you, he will only offer you a noose and you will be able to strangle yourself), who did not hesitate to act. What spoils the movie to some extent is the already mentioned message of the whole movie. I mean, the final quarter hour, when the movie starts to moralize and denies everything before. Even in this engaged form about Sophia's choice the movie is good, that´s true, it just goes against the original message, which does not offer (and, after all, does not allow in principle) easy solutions. Shannon is excellent, Laura Dern is a makeweight and Garfield is much better than you would expect, although his character has so many layers that he doesn’t manage all of them equally good. So, in one role, he surprisingly proves that is a really good actor while with another role he is clearly struggling. (09/12/2016)

Too bad about the last five minutes, they give various hints and bits and pieces from halfway through, and yes, it's a bummer. Otherwise, it would have been an unbelievable blast. Still, within the "American economy-real estate-hypothetical crisis" theme, it's still a bit better than The Big Short, which is unnecessarily layered, with a lot of angry superbrokers, verbose and complex for the layman with a lot of jumble of numbers. 99 Homes is an incredibly direct and raw film, where the crisis doesn't play out through numbers on paper, but through the stress and suffering on the street, right in the flesh, where poor people are losing their homes and the uncompromising Michael Shannon is just conducting his next demonic gala performance, this time as a materialistic stockbroker, from his new Range Rover. It’s so intense it gets under your skin. If it weren't for the ending, this would be one of the hardest films in a long time. And while the opposing sides are clearly laid out and you know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy, in some ways it's impossible not to understand both. (05/05/2016)

This is a beautiful example of how the world is not a disgusting place, but how people make it disgusting. And it's not just the scumbags from real estate agencies, but it's also the scumbags who don't follow the rules and think they suffer. Sure, some suffer unjustly, but is it the majority? I really don't think so. People are not capable of following rules, whether they are the poor ones or those above them. (20/01/2016)