99 Homes brings the housing crash of 2008 into perspective

Broad Green Pictures

What would you be willing to do to try to save your family’s home? Could you put aside all of your moral convictions, roll up your sleeves, shovel shit and work for the devil himself? I was left pondering these questions after watching Broad Green Pictures’ 99 Homes. I’ve always had an irrational fear about being left homeless, and this film left me feeling pangs of anger, pity and soul-searching panic afterwards.

In 99 Homes, Andrew Garfield plays Dennis Nash, a man who gets evicted from his family home, along with his young son, Connor (Noah Lomax), and his mother (Laura Dern). Nash is a hard worker, but the construction industry has all but dried up in Orlando, allowing his family to fall several mortgage payments behind. The family receives several eviction notices and has been to court many times to fight for their home. When the judge tells them they have 30 days to file an appeal like everybody else, they mistakenly think this means they won’t be evicted on their posted eviction date. However, they’re in for a rude awakening (as is anybody else watching who has never observed an eviction firsthand).

On the date of their eviction, members of the sheriff’s department show up to seize control of the home along with Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), a ruthless real estate agent who capitalizes upon the financial hardships of others. The Nash family is told that they’re trespassing on the bank’s property and are given “two courtesy minutes” to gather what personal belongings they need/value. They’re then herded out to the bottom of their driveway like dogs, forced to watch Carver’s foreclosure crew come in and sweep out all of their remaining belongings into the yard. They’re informed they have 24 hours to remove anything else they want, but anybody is free to come along and take anything they see lying around unguarded. Human dignity and respect mean next to nothing to the government or to the bank that have foreclosed on the home. And the real estate agent is chomping at the bit to re-list the home on the market in order to make a handsome profit for himself.

Sound like a familiar story to you? It should ring a certain element of realism, in that it fairly accurately portrays the housing crisis/economic crash of 2008 during which many Americans lost their homes, and corruptive foreclosure practices cheated the government and homeowners alike out of a lot of money. Writer-director Ramin Bahrani spoke to various real estate brokers, developers and lawyers in the Orlando area while writing the story, and the actors actually spent time with people being evicted to give it that gritty, realistic quality. What’s really sad is the realization that these events are not solely in the past – I’m sure countless evictions continue to take place on any given day in any given city in the present. And I doubt any of those people are treated with the dignity or respect that they deserve. Let this quote from the film sink in: “America doesn’t bail out the losers. America was built by bailing out winners, by rigging a nation of the winners, for the winners, by the winners.”

Broad Green Pictures

Shannon makes a complex, charismatic villain in 99 Homes. In the opening scene, you witness just how callously he deals with a violent suicide brought about by an eviction. He has the gall to make jokes about the situation to the police officers on the scene, all the while screaming at various assistants over the phone about other scheduled evictions and real estate transactions. However, he also takes a minute to tenderly speak with his concerned wife who has just witnessed the suicide on the news – he merely tells her to keep their girls away from the television and the internet but that he’s fine.

I suppose a “foreclosure king” such as Carver would almost have to view the people being evicted as sub-human (he refers to them as animals with sob stories later on) in order to justify his actions and allow him to sleep peacefully at night in the mansion he’s built by taking away and reselling so many of their hard-earned homes. Carver is practically evil incarnate, especially when he offers Nash a job – handling all of the construction needs on the foreclosed homes and actually making him carry out several of the eviction notices himself. No, Nash didn’t have to take the job with Carver. But when you’re forced to move your family into a seedy motel to keep from being out on the streets and you’re desperate to earn some money in an economy that’s taken a nosedive, I guess you’d be surprised at how little the devil actually has to do to twist your arm to sign over your soul and do his bidding.

At first, everything seems legal and by the books. Carver has a polite, polished speech prepared when he’s evicting a family. But the film quickly exposes the corrupt underbelly of foreclosures: the reality of robo-signings, reverse mortgage trickery, Cash for Keys scams and other ways for Carver to steal money from Fannie Mae and the government at-large. If you’re like me, you’re left feeling jaded, pissed off and rooting for Nash to somehow rise above it all and earn his family’s home back from Carver because surely one man deserves to beat this corrupt system. Garfield and Dern are heartbreakingly convincing in their performances. My only gripe was Garfield didn’t look old enough to have a son as old as Connor.

99 Homes is currently out on DVD and Digital HD. Watch for a bonus scene with director’s commentary explaining yet more unsavory real estate tactics as explained by Shannon’s character Carver.

Broad Green Pictures