Irishchatter
I really thought both men were the bad guys because by looking at the movie poster, they are laughing with each other. It was pure bad luck that Howard got involved with Chad in trying to find a smart lonely woman and hurt her. At the same, he knew what that costed, he should've known better. Christine was right to have moved to another job and become a successful clerk. I honestly don't blame her, she was treated so poorly by the two men and that's what Chad wanted.You would really be wondering in the end if Howard was dragged out by the police in the bank because he had such lungs in trying to get through to Christine. I really hope so, shes better off without him and Chad. I also hope she meets someone better than them! The acting was brilliant, didn't understand the story line at first but when you continue watching it, it's really good. I give this 8/10
tieman64
Neil Labute's "In The Company of Men" stars Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy as Chad and Howard, a pair of mid-level corporate executives sent to a boring regional branch for six weeks on a short term project. Frustrated, recently burnt by women, stuck in a career rut and high on corporate testosterone, the duo hatch a plan. "Let's hurt somebody," alpha-male Chad says. Pretty soon they're cooking up a Machiavellian scheme to locate an insecure woman, date her simultaneously, and dump her in the most vicious way possible. The woman they set their sights on is handicapped co-worker Christine. Christine has a speech impediment, but what she says doesn't matter to Chad anyway. Denied a voice, Chad handles her like an object to be acquired, traded, owned and discarded.Labute is heavily influenced by David Mamet. Most of the film finds Chad spewing corporate maxims, strutting about like a Master of the Universe and forcing co-workers to grovel at his feet. Eventually its revealed that Chad's scheming extends even to his "friend" Howard. He's your classic Extreme Sociopath, charming but endlessly manipulative. Everyone's his puppet. And as with Mamet's "workplace flicks", Chad's less a character than an extreme manifestation of a corporate logic whose drive for profit, ownership and expansion slowly infects how everyone around him thinks, acts and feels. Eventually Chad becomes both a norm and standard to aspire to. He's the new hypermasculinist ideal, for whom humiliation, domination, degradation, exploitation and suffering conflate with success. It's not only that aggressive competition in business affects masculinity, romance and sexual behaviour, but that corporate logic magnifies power, the ego and sanctions what is essentially various forms of rape. This stance is the opposite of how contemporary ideology is (mis)perceived, in which "business" is seen to be "neutral" and "mutually beneficial".Chad's a character who's popped up in many films and stories. More interesting is Howard, a fairly meek guy who is corrupted and made to do things even more horrible than Chad. The real world is made up of Howards. Chad's the anomaly, existing always more as spirit or underlying drive.La Bute penned "The Shape of Things" as an attempt to reverse the gender roles of "Company". Arguably his best film, it's also part of a tight trilogy by Labute about people's perceptions of physicality ("Fat Pig", "Reasons to be Pretty", "Shape of Things"). Massive spoilers ahead."The Shape of Things" initially unfolds like a conventional romantic comedy. We're introduced to a dishevelled English Literature student called Adam, played by the always likable Paul Rudd, and an attractive art student called Evelyn (Rachel Weisz). The film then becomes a modern version of Adam's seduction by Eve. Eve ensnares Adam, manipulates him into becoming "fit", "attractive" and "healthy", and then reveals that she has never had romantic feelings toward him; she was merely using Adam as a sort of living art installation, a clay puppet, deceptively sculpting and moulding his mind and body. When Eve reveals her scheme to Adam – she invites him to an art installation in which he is quite literally presented as an exhibited object, her gaze now likened to the masculinist gaze of "In The Company of Men" - he's dumbfounded. Eve's tricked him into getting cosmetic surgery and altering his personality and physique. She's reconstructed him. Treated him as a chunk of malleable flesh.Unlike "Company", we're then invited to work our way through the messy ethical minefield of the victimiser's actions. For while Chad deservedly gets no sympathy in "Company", the relationship in "Things" is much harder to work out. Is Adam now a better person? Was Eve's love, no matter how virtual, beneficial to Adam? Was it ever real? How much authority should be given, or do we give, to artists? How much ethical responsibility do they hold or exercise? How do power relationships within romantic couples overlap with the power we grant artists? Don't Eve's actions echo the sexism of "Compny"? What is acceptable artistic material? Do the means, in art, justify the ends? At what point does creation become manipulation, is manipulation ever justified and at what point does creation destroy (see "Vertigo")? Is Adam now a beautiful work of "art" despite Eve's actions? How do Eve's actions differ from other vampiric artists, who take from and/or abuse outside sources? What does the film say about romance and the lover's desire to alter their partner? Art may be made by monsters, but what about the audience who enjoys? And on and on it goes.The film features a shot of the sentence "There is no morality in art". The quote's by Chinese novelist Han Suiyin, and is stencilled over Eve's art gallery. Throughout the film Eve articulates a similarly postmodern stance: "it's all subjective", she says, "moralists have no place in an art gallery". The firm itself is structured, we think, as an artist's apologia. Its first scene portrays Eve as an iconoclast who thrice breaks the rules, stepping over a rope at a museum, taking an illegal photograph of a sculpture and painting a penis onto a statue which has been censored by uptight museum curators. "You stepped over the line, Miss," curator Adam prophetically says when he firsts meets her. But as Eve makes clear, there should be no lines. We agree with her for much of the film. Afterall, hasn't she liberated Adam? By the film's end, however, we're asked to reconsider Eve's stance. Labute himself reconfigures Han Suiyin's quote. It's not that "there is no morality in art", in the sense that morality should not apply to art, but more literally, that "there is now, no longer, morality in art". Artists have no ethical compass, social feeling or attachment toward world, community or fellowman. Such art doesn't only exist in a vacuum, but is inherently selfish and nihilistic. You know, like Chad. 8/10 - Worth one viewing.
Jackson Booth-Millard
From directorial debut of Neil LaBute (Nurse Betty), the premise of the film sounded a very interesting black comedy drama, and being five stars, I wasn't going to miss it. Basically work buddy junior executives Chad (The Dark Knight's Aaron Eckhart) and Howard (Matt Malloy) are on a six week business trip, and have both recently been hurt by women. They plot an horrible to find the most naive and vulnerable women they can as revenge to all women, to find her, date her, romance her, and then dump her, with her feelings and self-esteem being completely destroyed. They choose their perfect victim, deaf secretary Christine (Stacy Edwards), who can only understand people by reading their lips. It goes according to plan, especially for Chad who she is most smitten with, however it is complicated for Howard who has genuinely fallen for Christina. Howard cannot stand to see Christine being hurt and tells her the "game" that he and Chad has formed, and she obviously tells Chad she knows, only slapping him, after he leaves crying on the bed. Weeks later, Chad's real girlfriend Suzanne (Emily Cline) hadn't actually left him, like he had told Howard earlier, so no real change to his life, and the last thing Howard does is try to talk to Christine, but she ignores him, and the film ends with him constantly shouting "listen". This independent black comedy drama is brave, hard-hitting, controversial and in some moments deliberately uncomfortable viewing, so I would definitely recommend it. Very good!
Rabster22
Not a typical film, it looks more like a play. A series of set-piece dialogues in which it is very rare to see even three people in any given scene. Set in a non-specific 'corporate' world in nameless locations the film suggests that these people could be living near you... Chad and Howard are colleagues and friends, embittered with the world. Women, work colleagues, the system have all conspired to hold them back, nothing is their fault, they just haven't got them breaks. Chad decides to play a cruel game in which while on a six week relocation they will both 'romance' the same woman then dump her. Break her heart just for the hell of it. In their dotage they can bask in the glory of her humiliation. Though Howard appears the weaker of the two men he agrees to play an active role. These are not easy people to like, but the sad thing is they probably *do* exist somewhere near you. Chad is charisma and charm while spitting venom in private. Is Howard simply more easily led? I cannot decide, but he is no saint. They want a 'vulnerable' woman so a deaf typist is to these men ideal, they look down on women, a disabled woman even more so. I will not go any further with the actual story, it is worth sticking with despite it being at times difficult viewing. Refreshingly different.
