'The Company Men' explores the personal costs of corporate cutbacks

The Company Men, John Wells' intelligent, involving film about the effects of corporate layoffs on an executive, a middle manager, and a salesman at a Boston shipbuilding conglomerate, is about how each responds to being thrown overboard. Will they sink, or swim?

Filmed nearly two years ago and still timely, the movie bristles with torn-from-today's-headlines subjects, as did Wells' E.R. and The West Wing. (The movie, like those shows, similarly revolves around workplace relationships.) Its principal assets are the incisive performances by Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, and Ben Affleck as employees of the fictional GTX, a company that cares more about maximizing profits than its root business.

GTX was their family; now it is their ex-wife.

One by one, these white-collar men with mortgages and wives and children are cut loose. First, it's Bobby (Affleck), the upbeat salesman whose well of optimism runs dry when he spends months at a fluorescent-lit placement center that's the waiting room to jobless hell.

Next it's Phil (Cooper), the Vietnam vet promoted from factory floor to management, pink-slipped because the cruise ships GTX ordered for construction in boom times are, in down times, like anvils in quicksand.

Then there's Gene (Jones at his gruffest), who cofounded the firm with CEO James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) and takes aim at his best friend for spending millions on new headquarters instead of keeping jobs.

Though not blessed with a cinematic eye, Wells is a gifted storyteller who gets nuanced performances from most of his actors. The exceptions are Nelson and Maria Bello, the dragon lady of GTX's HR department, one-dimensional villains who care only about their stock options.

For one who rides mass transit, a scene where Bobby trades down his Porsche for a Ford Focus might inspire eye-rolling, but Wells gets at the universals of unemployment. The shame of being a bread loser hits Bobby and Phil hard. If what you do is who you are, if you do nothing, are you nothing? We see them lose their pride, and then their homes.

The ray of light in this cloudy economic forecast is Kevin Costner, potent as Jack, Bobby's brother-in-law, a construction worker contemptuous of guys who have resumés instead of tangible skills.

Jack emerges as the stealth hero of the movie, the one who sacrifices his own profits in order to employ guys, like his much-resented brother-in-law, who need work.

Inching from the desperate to the hopeful, The Company Men comes down squarely against those who make deals in favor of those who make things.