Last Updated on August 2, 2021
PLOT: An ambitious, middle-class businessman (Liev Schreiber) sees an opening into a more lucrative lifestyle when his daughter (Maya Hawke) starts dating the son of a ruthless investor (Peter Sarsgaard), but a deadly accident involving the children complicates things.
REVIEW: In some ways, HUMAN CAPITAL feels like a throwback to the ensemble indie dramas that were in vogue in the early 2000s following the success of films like AMERICAN BEAUTY, IN THE BEDROOM and CRASH. This is based on a novel by author Stephen Amidon that was already adapted into an Italian film of the same name a couple of years ago and seemed to get somewhat lost in the shuffle of big premieres at last year’s TIFF.
That’s too bad as HUMAN CAPITAL is a pretty compelling little drama that’s a solid VOD rental, especially now considering that so many theaters are closing in the wake of COVID-19. What distinguishes it from similar fare is that writer Oren Moverman (RAMPART) and director Marc Myers (MY FRIEND DAHMER) do something interesting in that they divide the film up into three sections, each following one of the main characters, before finally converging in the climax.
We start off following around Liev Schreiber’s harried real estate agent as he tries to hustle up a 300K investment to buy into Sarsgaard’s hedge fund, even though he can barely make ends meet and has a younger wife (Betty Gabriel) who’s expecting twins. We then jump over to Marisa Tomei as Sarsgaard’s neglected wife, a former scream queen having an affair with a film professor (Paul Sparks), before finally centering on “Stranger Things” breakout Maya Hawke as Schreiber’s daughter, who winds up having an affair with the bad boy (Alex Wolff) patient her stepmom is giving therapy to.
It all converges on a deadly hit and run affecting a waiter at the country club they all had dinner at, with the prime suspect being Sarsgaard’s drunken, closeted gay son (Fred Hechinger) but things don’t play out as predictably as you think. While Sarsgaard’s character is a bit simplistic, being a cruel investor without any compunction about ruining lives in a heartbeat (while his lawyer, played by Aasif Mandvi is an even worse yuppie from hell), everyone else is pretty layered.
Schreiber, while a foolhardy gambler poser, is shown to genuinely love his family and want to do right by them, while as his daughter, Hawke, subverts expectations somewhat by daring to play a character that while initially seeming like our heroine, can just as easily be led astray by a relationship that gives her conscience a back seat. Ditto Wolff’s character, a drug-dealing teen trying to go straight, but doomed both by fate and his recklessness to come to a bad end. No one is simple here, with Schreiber a far cry from “Ray Donovan” as a guy who has no idea whatsoever how to handle chaos. Tomei is also very effective as the now ignored trophy wife who has to take control following a tragedy, while Hawke and Wolff once again prove why they’re being hyped so much. Both are pretty clearly stars in the making.
My big beef with HUMAN CAPITAL is that it seems to end prematurely, with the big hit and run being resolved in a way that leaves a lot of collateral damage, and to be honest, I would have liked the film to depict how everyone dealt with the aftermath rather than just ending with a quick flash-forward which doesn’t really resolve anything. Nevertheless, it’s still pretty compelling stuff and a solid watch, especially when options for new releases seem limited at the moment – so give it a shot. It’s a solid flick.
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