Conspiracy Theory

National Review, Sept 15, 1997 by John Simon

NO FILM within recent memory has aroused more public and private discussion than In the Company of Men, the 34-year-old Neil LaBute's first feature. Cheap at a quarter-million dollars, it was (though this doesn't get mentioned) clearly shot in 16 millimeters and imperfectly blown up: some sequences look rather muddy. Yet even that is turned into a virtue. In the New York Times, Janet Maslin writes, "In retrospect this colored film almost seems to have been in black and white. Its ideas are that stark." Or its cinematography that poor.

The movie's main problem is that it doesn't make sense. Two old school chums, Chad and Howard, work for the same company. Both have woman trouble: Chad's girlfriend apparently walked out; Howard's ex-girl importunes his mother on the phone. Chad, a handsome go-getter, proposes to the nerdy Howard joint vengeance on the female sex. They will find a specially vulnerable young woman, romance her for all they are worth, then leave her high and dry. Hesitant, Howard nevertheless agrees.

The company sends the pair out on a project to a branch office in another town for six weeks. Everything is left completely vague. We don't know what sort of company they work for, or what they are sent out to do. There is much talk about presentations, but we don't learn who is presenting what to whom. We don't even find out which two cities are involved.

At the new location, Chad discovers Christine, a sweet and pretty but deaf typist, her romantic life handicapped by her slurred speech -- the ideal victim. Chad tells Howard, "Trust me, she'll be reaching for the sleeping pills in a week. And we'll be laughing about this till we are very old men." They start independently dating Christine, each not quite knowing what the other is up to. The guileless girl likes both, but prefers the handsome devil, goes to bed with him, and is utterly, blissfully in love. Yet she keeps platonically dating Howard.

The two men occasionally discuss their progress, though neither is fully open with the other. When Chad must return to the home office for a weekend, Howard, who has accidentally discovered that Chad has been seeing more of Christine, senses his chance. In a grim scene in his car, Christine confesses that she is in love with Chad, whereupon Howard, hurt and furious, spills the beans, lacerating the young woman. I wish I could tell you more, but maybe even this much is preposterous enough.

Why would the debonair and dashing Chad be that close to a nerd for so many years? Why would Howard, assuming that he would agree to such a dastardly plan, not keep closer tabs on Chad? Surely in such a joint scheme the plotters would compare notes more carefully. Can an executive be as nerdy as Howard? Can the psychopathic Chad get away with things undetected by all? As it turns out, Chad has it in for Howard as much as for Christine after so many years of friendship.

The basic idea is not all that new. It goes back to Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses, which has been variously dramatized and filmed. Recently the French film La Discrcte by Christian Vincent had an even more similar story line. What distinguishes In the Company of Men is that it is set in America and has several twists near the end. Neither of the two main ones is plausible: the quasi-happy one contradicts the basic motivation for the plot; the drastic one turns Howard unwarrantedly into an idiot.

What LaBute wants to say, insofar as one can make it out, is that evil is mostly motiveless, and that (to quote the title of a Kurosawa film) the bad sleep well. Also that the corporate atmosphere somehow fosters individual nefariousness. Unfortunately, neither case is compellingly made. One also gets tired of some of LaBute's camera setups, notably his low-angle shots. I wasn't surprised to find the interview with LaBute in the press kit crawling with grammatical errors and stylistic lapses, despite his studies at three universities and literary fellowships at Sundance and at London's Royal Court Theatre. But Aaron Eckhart is a first-class Chad, and Stacy Edwards a magnificent Christine. Depending mostly on facial expressions and a few lines of clotted, guttural speech, she is quietly heartbreaking.

One scene has garnered special attention. In it, Chad brutalizes a young black employee, first with sarcasm ("Let me give you a professional tip: the word is ask!"), then by insisting that to qualify for advancement the youth must strip and show his balls. Since he reluctantly complies, it is in the brains department that he may be deficient.

Interesting as the subject of Conspiracy Theory is, the screenwriter Brian Helgeland and the generally unappetizing director Richard Donner have gone about it the wrong way. They were not content with showing how a cabbie consumed with unhinged notions of conspiracy everywhere, and in love from a distance with a beautiful lawyer for the Justice Department, becomes involved in a real conspiracy which, through life-threatening danger, brings the two of them close together.