In the Company of MenIn the Company of MenIn the Company of MenIn the Company of Men
Directed by Neil LaBute
By now anyone who is really into movies has heard of in the company of men. If not, here's the basic premise. Two guys, Chad and Howard (Aaron Eckhart, on the right, and Matt Malloy) are tired of women treating them like crap, so Chad makes a plan to destroy a random woman. The two of them are supposed to go on a business trip for 6 weeks, and in that time they'll pick out a girl, both of them will wine and dine her, make her feel real special, then out of nowhere, dump her and take off. To make the game even more fun, Chad decides they should pick someone who has a disability, something so that the person probably hasn't had a date in a while. Well, as luck would have it, when they start at their jobs, a deaf women named Christine (Stacy Edwards) is working there as a typist, and the game begins. I won't tell you how it turns out, it's worth it to find out for yourselves. The big uproar about this movie was the treatment this poor woman gets, and the lack of sympathy she gets from the guys. Supposedly men love the movie and women hate it. I didn't see what the big hubbub was about. It was a well made movie, considering it was made for what I hear was about $25,000. The actors were excellent, especially Edwards. She's not deaf in real life, but she played the part perfectly. LaBute, who directed and wrote the movie, does a fine job in his debut. It is a hard movie to take at times, the guys put the woman through a lot, but it's not as rough as I thought it would be. The hype was that these guys showed no compassion at all, but there was a scene in a diner where the two guys were having lunch that took the edge off a little. They made themselves seem a little vulnerable at that point, so the rest of the movie I was wondering if they would be able to go on with the game at all. Overall I thought the movie was good, but it certainly didn't live up to all the hype. A good job for a low budget independant.
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