THE COMPANY MEN

Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Craig T. Nelson Rosemarie DeWitt, John Dorman, Liam Ferguson, Dana Eskelson, Tonye Patano, Scott Winters, Candy Huffman (Written and directed by John Wells)

How’s this for typecasting? Three first-rate actors who do not get as many gigs as they deserve are starring as a trio of macho, blithely confident employees abruptly sacked by the hot-to-downsize honchos of a Massachusetts shipbuilding firm.

Not that you should think of these wannabe careerists played here by Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper as the brethren of the low-level laborers so triumphantly terminated by George Clooney in “Up in the Air.” Ben, Tommy Lee and Chris are—make that were—lavishly paid executives thoroughly accustomed to a life of luxury. That's why having to make do without mansions, pools, Porsches, country clubs, sybaritic getaways and marketable resumes is such a bummer for them.

If the rapturous response to this ripped-from-the-headlines flick at the 2010 Sundance Festival is a sign of things to come, ace TV writer-director John Wells, making his big-screen debut, and his three key players (plus Kevin Costner as a savvy survivor of the economic storm), will soon find themselves at the top of the Hollywood job heap. --Guy Flatley Opens 10/22/10