Drama about three executives at different levels and ages who lose their jobs in the ship building industry in Boston through downsizing. Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones are the three guys who successively are downsized and they each react in different ways. Affleck is the lead, who has a typical upper middle class huge home, and sports car with a wife and kid he hardly knows because his job has been his life. As he loses all his material possessions and winds up in a job search community he is humbled and finds worth in people and work that he used to have contempt for. The ultimate humiliation of having to move in with his parents is the bottom of the bucket. Whereas, Cooper cannot face the reality and kills himself and Jones leaves his wife for his adulteress, Affleck chooses to rediscover the value of those around him. He begins to work in construction with his detested brother in law, whom he used to look down on. But when he discovers the brother in law is taking losses and working weekends just to keep Affleck employed, he realizes his view of class structure is all wrong, and the best people are those he would not take two minutes to respect. Tommy Lee has to leave his adulteress and strike out on his own to discover the same thing and they eventually get together with all those in the job seeking pool to start a new company with a dream of treating workers with more value and respect.
