Company men

Everyone in Hollywood wants to be a director, especially big shots like John Wells. He had an excellent track record as a TV series creator, writer and producer (China Beach, Third Watch, West Wing, Smith, ER, Southland, Shameless). He'd directed nine episodes of ER, and had ample co-production funds to let himself write and direct a debut feature movie.

The Company Men, made in 2009, focuses on three senior- executive victims of US corporate down-sizing, played by Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper. For supporting roles, Wells snapped up Kevin Costner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Craig Wilson and Maria Bello. The movie premiered at Sundance in January 2010 and was bought by The Weinstein Company, which released it in January 2011 during the run-up to the Oscars. All concerned had dreamt of Oscar nominations.

The lethal problem with the movie as a cinema production is its formulaic blandness. The top-grade cast appear to be going through their standard emotions, in a plot-by-numbers scenario that may have originally been designed as a TV series pilot. Wells's direction makes the episodic flow of incidents look like a teleplay too, with lushly-furnished high-end Boston real estate, a trio of corporate execs whose friendly associations feel like dramatic contrivances, and cliched spouses (supportive working wife, spoilt rich matron, warmly sexual workmate).

Any regular consumer of above-average TV soap-operatics will guess the plot developments, and fans of Wells' productions will anticipate hearing several anti-capitalism barbs from the very non-Republican two-time president of Hollywood's Writers Guild. Collectors of TV cliches will also know the dismissed executives will form their own company, whose battles with their arch-capitalist former boss might have provided the framework for an aborted TV drama series.