American-Iranian Ramin Bahrani, director of a small handful of urgent films in the past, finally reaches his peak with this feature that not only sums up some of the fundamental issues with the American financial system, but manages to be just as exigent in its pacing, performances, and be unapologetically heavy-handed in getting its topic across. What’s been compared to a bigger fish like Oliver Stone’s Wall Street is this considerably boisterous sleeper hit, 99 Homes. After first premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival back in 2014, it initially skyrocketed with praise and excitement from both audiences and critics all around, garnering considerably the most recognition than any other film that premiered there. Now, the praise has slowed down, but that doesn’t mean it is all but gone. Regarding its seemingly artsy upbringing, it still remains a contemporary and fundamentally integral work of insight into some of our country’s flawed footings, and is conveyed with a classical story that truly speaks to the spirit. Behind 99 Homes there is what’s been described as a Faustian tale, in which the “hero” of a story is established as a lost vessel forced to make a pact with the devil in order to save themself or someone else. Here, the narrative has never been so well linked to this ordeal of a subject.

The movie stars Andrew Garfield as a single father, Dennis Nash, who lives with his mother (the great Laura Dern) and son (Noah Lomax) in suburban Florida, circa 2010; around the time that the Subprime Mortgage Crisis took full speed after the fallout of the economic crash in ‘08. Because of this, Nash loses his job in construction and ends up with nothing on his family’s plate but an eviction. The family’s eviction, orchestrated by real-estate agent Rick Carver (Michael Shannon, this time acting in the name of the bank), is depicted as nothing else, but what it is for how it is, regardless of it all being an act. Though we know they are just creating a scene based on countless other foreclosures, the scene is conveyed with the utmost reality and doesn’t let up on authenticity, making it seem like it is no fabrication, like Mr. Garfield and Ms. Dern could not pay the mortgage and were actually getting the boot from Shannon and company. Subsequently after the eviction, Nash looks to settle a score with Rick Carver and his crew when coming to them with the impression that they had a little more interest in other items of property aside from the home. Instead of what could have been a disastrous confrontation, Carver seduces Nash with the desperation to keep the life of his family afloat through the crooked offers of various jobs. And so the inaugural partnership between the two men is born, that bares exact parallels with the major players of Wall Street.

Shannon’s predator of housing, Carver, is something closer to the likes of Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko, once you get the full picture of what he does and the very way he operates the job that the common people dread. Shannon is practically back in the real life based contract killer role that he had in 2013, but with little less blood, and more kicks to the curb. Though Shannon is in his element yet again, this time as a greedy, ritzy, and strangely morose yet jubilant businessman, Garfield is the one who surprisingly lassos the audience with sympathy and passion as a man who loses his way for the betterment of his own. And this is a culturally integral question that many of us face, who are we really the most loyal to and is it worth it for anyone’s sake? But as the film’s tagline goes, “greed is the only game in town”, it’s clear that the world Dennis navigates is booked with corruption and scams, and with little housing for sympathy, no pun intended. This being an exact tool that Carver uses to his advantage when luring Nash deeper into his web of fortunes. Emotion is the number one thing Carver doesn’t want taking over the many workers staffed to be evictors when they were in the same place as Nash, and though there is a benefit to this kind of principle of thought in other circumstances, it can still very much prove to be the ostensive route to callousness. This is why Garfield’s job is to emit a sense of vulnerability and sheer sympathy for his victims when dragging them from their residences, which is found to be purposely vacant in Shannon when he works, making him the top dog in a business that calls for apathy. In a few scenes we see a relatively stark friendship brewing between Rick and Dennis that should be seen not as camaraderie in their triumph of property deals and ruined lives, but as survivors of a system that could have otherwise consumed them. And in some ways, Shannon plays Carver as not only a mentor but as a father figure who identifies the turmoil in Nash, that happens to be closer than further to Rick’s own backstory about how he ends up as the man we see. Through this relationship Carver proctors Nash about the food chain of their field of work and how deeply imbedded its cause is in American society, in order to convince Nash that they are all blameless in that regard.

Having done extensive research on the enormity of foreclosures down in Florida and spoken to many of the real life brokers and sheriffs involved in preparation for this rapid social thriller, director Bahrani is obviously fascinated by the moral power play at work in the people that he creates that are founded in the issues we experience today, and should continue this line of filmic commentary with diligence. Because this one is a swift and sweet milestone for the upcoming filmmaker. By all means, for its subject matter and its effort, 99 Homes is by far the most American movie of the year. Because of the implementation of an iconic literary theme into the burning context of our actual lives, this will be a tricky one to surpass.

99 Homes is now playing everywhere and is rated R.