--- title: 99 Homes Movie Review: Spider-Man Has a Housing Crisis description: Andrew Garfield as a displaced home owner finds a shady mentor in Michael Shannon in this fiery social parable canonical: https://time.com/3221884/review-spider-man-has-a-housing-crisis-in-99-homes/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-29T19:19:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T09:55:48.287Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: 99 Homes Movie Review: Spider-Man Has a Housing Crisis og:description: Andrew Garfield as a displaced home owner finds a shady mentor in Michael Shannon in this fiery social parable og:url: https://time.com/3221884/review-spider-man-has-a-housing-crisis-in-99-homes/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt403495f3b1edee3d/6986a17ff983e76d3404f717/99.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 99 Homes og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 99 Homes Movie Review: Spider-Man Has a Housing Crisis twitter:description: Andrew Garfield as a displaced home owner finds a shady mentor in Michael Shannon in this fiery social parable twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt403495f3b1edee3d/6986a17ff983e76d3404f717/99.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # REVIEW: Spider-Man Has a Housing Crisis in _99 Homes_ > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Aug 29, 2014 7:19 PM UTC  Hooman Bahrani by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Aug 29, 2014 7:19 PM UTC A man slouches on his bathroom toilet, dead from a gunshot wound, on the day he and his family are to be evicted from their Orlando home for overdue mortgage payments. The bloody scene doesn’t faze Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), a skilled, amoral repo man designated by the banks to take over forfeited homes. Joking that the man killed himself because he ordered pizza and his wife wanted Chinese, Carver brusquely instructs his gang to clean up the place, to escort the dead man’s survivors outside and dump their possessions onto the front lawn. Trespassers in their own home, the family has an hour to clear up and clear out. This three- or four-minute shot opens _99 Homes_ with cool, brutal elegance. Set in 2010, Ramin Bahrani’s sharp drama, which has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and will play this weekend at the Telluride festival, casts the recent and lingering housing crisis as a tense social parable of the domineering one percent and the imperiled 99\. Much more cogent and coherent than Bahrani’s _At Any Price_, which investigated the ethical dilemma of a farmer driven to corruption, the new movie sets up a Faustian bargain with the Mephistopehelia Carver. His Faust is Dennis Nash, played by Andrew Garfield. Mothballing his Spider-Man Spandex, Garfield slips into the skin of a dispossessed tradesman who can save his family only by learning, and perhaps joining, the forces of evil. Dennis, his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and his son Connor (Noah Lomax) are among Carver’s eviction victims, forced to move everything they still own into a small room in a motel packed with the dispossessed. To earn desperately needed money, and with the hope of repurchasing his home, he goes to work for Carver — first as a day laborer literally sweeping up the shit from a backed-up toilet, then as his boss’s mentor and executioner. Think of _It’s a Wonderful Life_, and imagine that, to get his home back, Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey had gone to work for Lionel Barrymore’s evil Mr. Potter. Then think of 99 Homes as a social parable in _Exorcist_ terms: Can Dennis learn the brutal details of repossessing homes without letting the demon Carver possess his tender soul? Somebody had to profit from the Great Recession that forced millions from their homes, and Carver is one of them. You could call him a vulture circling the carcass of the American dream of home ownership; he’d say he’s pursuing a (mostly) legal business, to which he applies a coroner’s dispassion and icy skill. Another unpaid mortgage, even if it leads to a man’s suicide, means another job for him. “Don’t get emotional about real estate,” he says. “They all got a sob story, but the law’s the law.” One might agree with Mr. Bumble in _Oliver Twist_, that “If the law supposes that… the law is a ass — a idiot.” A spiritual cousin to the sensitive, fretful young men Garfield played in _The Social Network_, _Never Let Me Go_ and _The Amazing Spider-Man_, Dennis at first doesn’t have the patter down when he knocks on doors to evict homeowners. He apologizes for, doesn’t command, the situation; and unlike Carver, he is loath to make eye contact with his marks. But he’s smart, and knows that making good money often requires a soiled conscience. He’s a bit like Eddie, the debt-ridden gambler in the 2008 _Vegas: Based on a True Story_ (also shown at Venice, and directed by _99 Homes_ co-scripter Amir Naderi), who is told that robbers may have buried $1 million in his highly mortgaged property. As Eddie went prospecting for gold in his own backyard, so Dennis tries to reclaim his own home by throwing people just like him out of theirs. Beginning and ending with a forlorn man’s gunplay, the movie sometimes uses the blunt tools of melodrama to make its points; and Garfield can get adolescently dewy in skirmishes with his Manichan mentor. But it’s a great showcase for Shannon, who magnetizes all eyes, like a cobra in the corner. “America doesn’t bail out losers,” he says. “America bails out winners.” Shannon as actor and Carver as charismatic scoundrel are winners, and neither needs a government bailout to possess every minute of _99 Homes_. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3221884/review-spider-man-has-a-housing-crisis-in-99-homes/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3221884/review-spider-man-has-a-housing-crisis-in-99-homes/"},"headline":"REVIEW: Spider-Man Has a Housing Crisis in 99 Homes","datePublished":"2014-08-29T19:19:54.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T09:55:48.287Z","description":"Andrew Garfield as a displaced home owner finds a shady mentor in Michael Shannon in this fiery social parable","url":"https://time.com/3221884/review-spider-man-has-a-housing-crisis-in-99-homes/","keywords":["movies","Andrew Garfield","Venice Film Festival"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt403495f3b1edee3d/6986a17ff983e76d3404f717/99.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt403495f3b1edee3d/6986a17ff983e76d3404f717/99.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"99 Homes","caption":"","creditText":"Hooman Bahrani","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3221884/review-spider-man-has-a-housing-crisis-in-99-homes/","name":"REVIEW: Spider-Man Has a Housing Crisis in 99 Homes"}}]}] ```