99 Homes

Michael Shannon's Rick Carver embodies the cannibalistic cruelty of the 2008 housing bust in writer/director Ramin Bahrani's raw, realistic, albeit dated film "99 Homes."

Carver's own home is also a metaphor for the American economy and ethos a few years back: a fancy Florida foreclosure with mysterious stains seeping across the ceiling.

Carver's firm has evicted struggling carpenter handyman Dennis Nash (fraught Andrew Garfield), his young son and his home hairstylist mom Lynn (Laura Dern), who are forced to move into a motel "half full of people like us" in seedy Orlando.

The currently unemployed journeyman has no other choice but to dance with the devil and join Carver, a "Doppler fucking radar" to locate lives on the brink, to remove others who are derelict on their mortgages. Nash's "life turns into evictions," as well as other illicit activities, such as removing appliances and HVAC units once the properties are vacated, only to sell them back to the bank when the rehabs and flips begin.

His material life improves as he learns to live by Carter's real estate address, that the world is run "of the winners, by the winners, for the winners."

Yet Nash's soul, along with that of his motherless son and husbandless mother, cracks like the House of Usher under the ruthless Orange County sun as he becomes what he hates, rising only by climbing on the ruined lives of his fellow homeless.

The Blu-ray extras include a deleted scene, and audio commentary by Bahrani, who dedicates the film to Roger Ebert, a great supporter of the filmmaker's work.

Shannon offers his usual brilliant, intensely realistic work as a marginalized, aggressive yet nuanced survivor, worthy of the many accolades he's received for his performance: Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Actor Winner, and Best Supporting Actor nominations (although he's fifty percent of this film) from the Golden Globes, Critics' Choice, San Francisco Film Critics Circle, Independent Spirit and SAG Awards.

And he delivers the best line in the movie: "Don't get emotional about real estate. They're boxes."

"99 Homes"
Blu-ray
$29.99
http://www.99homesmovie.com