August 1, 1997 | A couple of white guys sitting around talking: Chad (Aaron Eckhart) and Howard (Matt Malloy), two white-collar, mid-level executives for an unnamed corporation, on their way to an anonymous city for a six-week project doing God-knows-what. The specifics of who they are, what they do for a living and why they’re spending six weeks in another place are never revealed. Besides, as In the Company of Men makes very clear very quickly, such details are almost entirely irrelevant to the nasty business at hand.
We join these Angry White Males in an airport departure lounge just minutes after Howard’s embarrassingly public break-up with a lady friend. Oddly enough, it is Chad, not Howard, who seems most enraged by what has transpired. The incident — which involved, apparently, Howard’s receiving a slap to the face — is more than the unpleasant end to a relationship. No, Chad tells Howard, the event is emblematic of everything lousy, dispiriting and downright humiliating that is their lot in life.
During their journey, and for a long time after they reach their hotel, Chad uncorks his pent-up rage, and encourages Howard to do the same. They’re angry, they agree, about the well-deserved promotions they have failed to receive, the incompetent superiors they must suck up to, the ambitious new employees who have designs on their jobs. And then, of course, there are the women. The ones who will break your heart, crush your balls, stab your back — and then claim to be sexually harassed.
Finally, at some point in the middle of one more for the road, Chad makes a monstrous proposal: Since, as males of the species, they deserve some kind of “payback” from the females who have tormented them, why don’t they get even? Howard is shocked and, at first, visibly uneasy. The more he listens, however, the more receptive he is.
Chad’s plan is as simple as it is soulless. While they’re on their six-week assignment, they will choose an especially vulnerable young woman. Separately, they will feign escalating interest in her. For a month or so, she will savor the delicious bliss of being desired by two different, equally attentive suitors. “And then one day,” Chad promises, “out goes the rug, and there’s us pulling it hard. And Jill, she just comes tumbling after… Trust me, she’ll be reaching for the sleeping pills in a week. And we’ll be laughing about this until we are very old men.”
Best of all, Chad adds, their sick charade will give them the means to cushion the blow of any hardship that may befall them in later life. Because no matter what anyone does to them, they’ll be able to say: “They never got me like we got her.”
From the opening minutes of In the Company of Men, the influence of David Mamet looms large. Writer-director Neil LaBute doesn’t merely replicate the more conspicuous quirks of Mametspeak — the cryptic ellipses, the blunt-spoken profanities, the tirades fueled by macho swagger and fuming resentment. Proving himself to be a very worthy student of the master, LaBute evidences the same sort of mater-of-fact fearlessness as Mamet when it comes presenting characters and confrontations that might brand their creator as a misogynist. If Mamet’s Oleanna provoked post-performance shouting matches in playhouse lobbies, then In the Company of Men might well incite fistfights in theater parking lots. Because, like Mamet, LaBute makes no apologies, offers no judgments. He merely presents a clear-eyed, dispassionate view of despicable human behavior, and invites us to draw our own conclusions.
It doesn’t take long for Chad and Howard to locate a pathetically easy victim: Christine (Stacy Edwards) a shy temp worker who is all the more vulnerable for being deaf. Chad can’t believe their good fortune. To his great discredit, Howard shares his co-worker’s enthusiasm.
Slowly, stealthily, Chad begins his mating dance, faking sincerity (“That’s a lovely blouse”) and, when Christine take a day of sick-leave, affecting solicitude. (“Did she get the flowers? Ah, terrific. No, I just took up a collection in the office. No big deal.”) Howard’s moves aren’t nearly so smooth, perhaps because, unlike Chad, he occasionally is troubled by a pang of conscience. Even so, both men capture Christine’s fancy. Indeed, she is so open and eager and unreservedly responsive to their attention that, in a rare moment of what almost seems like compassion, Chad admits that he might be taken with her. Just a little.
The admission probably would be a lot more believable if it didn’t come so soon after Chad and Howard share yet another tasteless joke about Christine’s deafness. And if the admission came from anyone in the world who wasn’t so a thoroughgoing son of a bitch.
At once artfully exaggerated and stripped to essentials, In the Company of Men obviously was filmed on a frayed-shoestring budget. But LaBute, making his debut as a feature filmmaker, has made a virtue out of necessity. His minimalist compositions have the stark, shadow-lit quality of Edward Hopper paintings. And since he really doesn’t have the means — or, just as likely, the inclination — to turn his camera’s gaze elsewhere, LaBute concentrates on intensely intimate close-ups and tightly focused medium shots, all the better to make members of the audience feel like voyeurs — or, worse, co-conspirators. LaBute doesn’t merely want us to be shocked by the misanthropy. He wants to force us right to the edge of the abyss, to make a viewer think, “Oh, Christ — I know that guy.” And then, maybe, “Oh, Christ – could I possibly be that guy?”
The toxic rage that spews from Chad (and, occasionally, from Howard) is undeniably ugly stuff. But In the Company of Men doesn’t allow us the soothing comfort of being able to distance ourselves completely from the ugliness.
To be sure, Chad is an utterly amoral creature who likely will spend much of his life stewing over real or imagined slights. He has no shame and, even when confronted with his villainy, no excuses. In a climactic scene, he instinctively starts to lie about his motives — then, just as quickly, he shrugs his shoulders and, in effect, says: “Yes, I did it. Why? Because I could. So what?” (Remember the name: Aaron Eckhart. The actor is so frightfully persuasive, he runs the serious risk of being typecast for years to come.) And yet, for all that, there are moments in LaBute’s chillingly precise and flawlessly acted film when Chad’s rage at being overlooked, exploited or under-appreciated sounds — well, almost reasonable. Or at least discomfortingly familiar. Because, at those moments, the character and the filmmaker who created him are tapping into the mood of an age, a resentful suspicion (felt by women as well as men) that the system is rigged, the jobs can vanish at any moment, the manipulators have the upper hand, the just desserts are never served. Chad’s savage demand for “payback” is inexcusable. But it isn’t inexplicable. Which is part of the reason why In the Company of Men is able to exert such a darkly powerful fascination.
