99 Homes

Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) is down on his luck. He’s a single dad and a labourer, out of work as a result of houses in his town being foreclosed left and right and the construction industry at a standstill.

To make matters worse, this is the exact situation he soon finds himself in when the family home he shares with his son Connor (Noah Lomax) and mother Lynn (Laura Dern) is repossessed by real estate shark Rick Carver (Michael Shannon). In an unlikely turn of events, Dennis begins working with Rick and soon becomes his protégé. The money starts stacking up, but so too do the risks and dilemmas Dennis finds himself enmeshed in.

In 99 Homes, writer and director Ramin Bahrani has created a taut and unsettling film about moral decline. The dialogue backs up the storyline, with tense scenes shared between Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon. It also shows audiences a very human side to the fallout of the subprime mortgage crisis that has devastated countless lives and torn families apart in America.

99 Homes is hard to watch, but only because it’s so realistic and confronts one of our worst fears. (ASim)

***1/2

BY ALICIA SIM