I added this to my list because it is highly rated and seems to have been a particular favorite of many actors. It features a stellar cast, many of whom took pay cuts just to appear in this low budget production, and the director had to turn away many more A-list actors. Unfortunately I think this must have worked better in its original form as a stage play because although the characters keep talking and talking and talking, they ultimately say nothing at all and the film feels empty and pointless.

A group of real estate salesmen come under intense pressure from their manager, Williamson, to improve their sales. The owners of the company bring in a star salesman to deliver a blistering ultimatum that all but the top two salesmen will be fired. The salesmen however complain that they can’t sell because they’re not provided with good sales leads in the first place. Williamson has a stack of better leads but keeps them under lock and key as rewards to those who do well. The salesmen resort to various tactics. The star performer of the branch, Roma, wines and dines a good prospect. The elderly Levene who was once a good salesman but is now in a slump tries to beg and later bribe Williamson to give him some of the good leads. One of them, Moss, tries to persuade another salesman to break into the office to steal the good leads and sell them to a competitor.

Even if you didn’t know beforehand that this was adapted from a stage play, the small scope of the production should clue you in. Almost everything takes place either in the office of the real estate company or in the Chinese restaurant they hang out in just across the street. The camera work is decent with some atmospheric color tones but really the only thing of note that this film has going for it is dialogue, lots and lots of it. This is the kind of film that simply luxuriates in it, with fast talking, banter, comebacks, swearing. There’s energy in the relentless pace of the dialogue and drama in how the sentences goes to unexpected places. This is probably why so many actors fought to be involved in this project as they clearly enjoyed chewing their way through those lines. But as befits the insincere sales pitches that are really meant only to bamboozle clients, all of the dialogue amounts to a lot of empty words that ultimately mean absolutely nothing. To me there is zero appeal in this at all and the film becomes lifeless and pointless once you understand that there is nothing of substance whatsoever underneath all of the fancy wordplay.

I also dislike how the competition between the salesmen in the film manifests almost entirely in fighting over sales leads. From what I understand David Mamet, who wrote the play, based it on his own experience of working in a real-estate office, so it can’t be entirely unrealistic. But I fail to understand why the salesmen keep complaining about old and useless leads instead of trying to generate new ones through their own network of contacts. Also it doesn’t make sense for the manager to hoard leads to be slowly doled out as rewards. If someone expresses an interest in a property, it only makes sense to get a salesman on it as quickly as possible. Perhaps it’s just a reflection of a way of doing things in that era but it doesn’t seem at all plausible to me.

Personally I do tend to love films about financial shenanigans and unethical business practices. A prime example of this would be Margin Call. But the scam in here is too simple to arouse my interest and it feels too much like a writerly conception of salesmen psychology than anything grounded in day to day reality. Like I said before, this very stylized and pointed presentation may have its appeal on a stage but as a film, it falls completely flat for me.