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99 Homes

6/10

Stars: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern, Tim Guinee, Clancy Brown, Noah Lomax

Director: Ramin Bahrani

A grim little parable, with very little light and shade, about the emotionless men who repossess American houses when their owners can no longer keep up the payments.

One such unfortunate is Dennis Nash (Garfield), who lives with his mother (Dern) and young son (Lomax). Defeated at a court hearing, the family is forced to move into a motel after being evicted by Rick Carver (Shannon at his most sharkish) who has made a fortune by buying up now-empty houses.

Confronting one of Rick's men over the theft of some tools, Dennis finds himself hired by the housing tycoon and is soon serving eviction notices himself. Under Rick's tutelage, Dennis makes sufficient money to buy back his home, but that's (rather unbelievably) not enough, and here's where things start to go wrong.

Garfield, Shannon and the always excellent Dern create characters that are actually more believable than this essentially sad, if sometimes hard-hitting story.

David Quinlan

USA 2014. UK Distributor: StudioCanal. Colour by FotoKem.
108 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 2.

Review date: 21 Sep 2015