In 1940, John Ford made the definitive film about American life during the Great Depression, taking John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and adapting it into a poignant statement on a people attempting to rise to the challenges of economic collapse — and often falling short. What made that work so timeless wasn’t its attention to the larger economic and political issues at hand; it was the commitment to telling an effective small-scale story about this one family, keeping the big picture ever-present, but in the margins.

The opposite side of the coin when trying to make a statement through your film is that the story takes a backseat to the sermon, and the movie becomes a series of bulleted talking points. For example: The Company Men.

Writer/director John Wells has nothing but the noblest of admirable intentions. Just as Ford and Steinbeck sought to dramatize the struggles of the Depression, Wells tries to do the same with the current economic downturn, replacing destitute dust bowl farmers with downsized white collar MBAs. Ben Affleck is in the lead as Bobby, a hot-shot salesman for GTX, a heavy machinery manufacturing giant who gets canned in the movie’s opening sequence. He spends the rest of the film in an increasingly frustrating job search, holding out for a job comparable to his former cushy six-figure-plus-incentives position, increasingly at risk of losing his family’s home and having to go to work swinging a hammer for his smug, working-class brother-in-law (Kevin Costner).