The very first thing we see in 99 Homes is the brain-spattered wall of an Orlando bathroom where a man has committed suicide rather than be evicted from his home. The evictor, a Florida-twanged foreclosure vulture named Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), stands with his back to the body, yelling into his phone about how the messy crime scene complicates the process of preparing the house for resale. He's not wrong, but... yikes, buddy.
Ramin Bahrani isn't kidding around here. (You don't start your movie with a brain-spattered wall if you're kidding around.) The writer/director of warm character studies like 2005's Man Push Cart and 2008's Goodbye Solo starts his latest, a sort of morality play, on this dark note, and it leads to a well-executed long take that follows Carver out of the house and into his car, barking orders to his clean-up crew while defending his callous attitude to police. The year is 2010, and he's a real estate agent whose whole business is grabbing up foreclosed-upon homes.
