Rahmin Bahrani’s low-key thriller 99 Homes centers on downtrodden construction worker Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) and the Faustian deal he makes with devilish real estate crook Rick Carver (Michael Shannon). The film is a deliberately generic post-Occupy parable about the effects of living under capitalist control, specifically when you’re unaware that you are in fact living under capitalist control. This is an idea Bahrani explored to moderate success in his previous film, the melodrama At Any Price, but here he follows it to its most successful and emotional end. As in his near-masterpieces Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo, Bahrani maintains focus on character interplay, allowing relations between his two leads—both of whom (particularly Shannon) give excellent performances—to reveal the true nature of class disparity: the different ways people from different economic stations approach everything from family dynamics to business ethics to general human empathy. None of it sounds particularly revelatory, but when filtered through the thriller genre, of which Bahrani uses Michael Mann as his chief conduit, the story and characters feel unexpectedly vibrant and occasionally transcendent.
The first time the protagonists meet, Carver is evicting Nash from his home. Carver, utilizing various government loopholes, targets destitute homeowners nearing eviction, buys out their mortgages from local banks and ceremoniously removes residents from the property. Nash, along with his mother (Laura Dern) and young son, is his latest victim, but more than that, he is the victim of rampant unemployment, Orange County, Florida’s comically horrific local housing market and a seemingly unbreakable economic system that ensures the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, Carver is an example that sort of disproves the rule. He grew up poor and watched his laborer father get screwed over by insurance companies. When the economy crashed (the film is set in 2010), a hardened Carver saw the disaster as another Noah’s Ark; only this time, the survivors weren’t the divinely selected, but those willing enough to climb over their fellow man for a spot on the boat.
Right away, Bahrani sets up unique parallels between his two leads, bonds he explores further when Carver, seemingly taking pity on Nash, offers him a part-time job to clean up recently evacuated houses. Because of Nash’s ingenuity, Carver eventually makes him his right-hand man, showing him the tricks of the trade and dangling a carrot in the form of his former home. Nash takes to the gig and even enjoys making loads of cash at the government’s expense. But reality quickly catches up with him when he finds himself evicting people on Carver’s behalf, his past staring him dead in the face.
Structurally, 99 Homes is a typical morality play, but the film’s moral implications outweigh the simple story. Nash’s dilemma is a reflection of Bahrani’s issue with America. The film posits that financial recovery is possible, but only at the expense of another party, fueling an economy built solely around individual prosperity. It’s not a subtle or even original argument, and Bahrani’s dramatization is at times painfully obvious, but his rhetoric is invigorating, filled with specifics that deepen the strength of his narrative. The legal and bureaucratic loopholes Carver uses to increase his wealth exist in real life, and Bahrani articulates each one in a series of fiery dialogue scenes and cleverly designed montage sequences. But the film’s ultimate approach is emotional, not clinical. “Don’t get sentimental about real estate,” Carver likes to say, even though Bahrani makes devastatingly clear that in our aggressively capitalistic society, economic fortune is intrinsically tied to emotional well-being.
Like the bad guy in a Michael Mann film, Shannon gets all the best moments here, channeling Christopher Walken circa 1986 in his almost cartoonish villainy. The opening single-take shot provides uncomfortable insights into his character. Beginning with the blood-soaked bathroom of a potential evictee who chose to end his life rather than leave his home, the camera follows Carver as he casually surveys the scene, puffing an e-cigarette and barking orders at his staff and the local police, seemingly unaware of the shattered life laid before him. It’s a heavy scene, and perhaps an example of Bahrani being too blunt for his own good, but Shannon’s performance levels everything out.
Meanwhile, Garfield, unencumbered by the lycra suits and CGI ridiculousness of his ill-fated Spider-Man franchise, finally gets to do some real acting. A deceptively blue-collar performer, Garfield clearly gets Nash, a character who desires nothing more than steady employment and a roof over his family’s head. It’s easy to see how he confuses honest work with Carver’s casual cruelty, and Garfield’s sensitive approach ensures that Nash is never seen as the villain, even at his most desperate. Said desperation rears its head in the film’s extended finale, a white-knuckle sequence that finds Bahrani imbuing his complicated human drama with full-blown thriller theatrics. But even in such sensationalistic moments, the director carves out quiet grace notes, pointing his characters toward the path of redemption and waiting, like the rest of us, to see if they take it.