Some heartbreaking scenes in 99 Homes

By and large Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes is a melodrama about the conflict of good and evil with the evil (realtor Rick Carver) so instantaneously and consistently despicable that he almost flattens out the movie, which is too bad because had Carver had a few redeeming qualities the moral dilemma that protag faces would be more complex and engaging. That said, it's still a plenty engaging movie and it shines a harsh spotlight not so much and the banks and their political cronies that caused the housing bubble and the recess of 2008 as the second- and third-tier plays who actually made $ (and still are) in the crisis: Realtors who snapped up foreclosed houses, forced the residents (usually homeowners) out in brutal fashion often illegally, construction crews in league w/ others who stole appliances and materials and then billed the replacement costs onto the various federal agencies who took the foreclosed properties, thereby profiting twice, and so forth. The movie is great on showing the workings of these schemers, and does a fine job placing the protagonist in a dicey moral position: he's kicked out of his family home by an illegal foreclosure (the movie shows how the judges are in league w/ the banks and realtors), living in a scary transient motel w/ mother and son (it's never made clear why there are no spouses or same gen partners), teh nasty guy who kicked him out recognizes a talent and brings him a long as a protegee - and he soon finds himself pushing people and their belongings out into the street, in hopes of earning enough quick cash to buy back his foreclosed house. So he sells his soul to the devil - but only up to a point - and the movie ends on an ambivalent and open note, as we never fully learn the protag's fate, which is fine - everyone's fate is open, to a degree. The best and bar for most sorrowful part of the movie is the sequence of eviction scenes, people literally pushed out on the street with the belongings piled up like trash. The most pathetic is the eviction of the very old man who clearly has some kind of dementia and no connection to any relatives or neighbors, heart-breaking, and sadly incredibly likely and real.