AT ANY PRICE – The Review

The cutthroat world of agribusiness gets the spotlight in AT ANY PRICE, a Farmville soap opera with a curiously cynical look at Midwestern prairie life. This earnest generational drama from writer/director Ramin Bahrani never comes together to work as a whole, but some good performances and peculiar plot turns make it a more entertaining experience than perhaps it should be. AT ANY PRICE centers on the Whipple family of rural Iowa, specifically Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid) and Dean Whipple (Zack Efron), father and son farmers with different outlooks on life.  Henry has worked hard to maintain his inherited and lucrative seed farming empire and treats his business as an aggressive capitalist enterprise. He’s introduced at a funeral, shamelessly hitting up the family of the deceased to sell him their land. Henry is being investigated for breaking his contract with corporate giant Liberty Seed (a thinly-veiled Monsanto) by reusing seeds and selling them to smaller farms, instead of buying new seeds annually, as he’s legally obligated to (a subplot based on real court cases chronicled in the documentary FOOD INC.). Meanwhile Dean, who has lived in the shadow of his favored, absent older brother, is expected to take over the family business but has dreams of a career as a race car driver. Henry spends much time covering his tracks while trying to identify find the person who betrayed his trust by squealing on him to Liberty, all the while growing more detached from his wife (Kim Dickens) and son.

The first half of AT ANY PRICE illustrates how farmers battle over territory, attempting to sell genetically modified seeds from a big company to smaller farms to ensure that they’re number one in sales in the most number of counties.  What surprised me was the lack of high-minded messaging in AT ANY PRICE. Liberty Seed is a clear stand-in for Monsanto and their investigators are portrayed as jerks, yet the film doesn’t indict the agra-giant, or their genetically modified product like one would expect from a Hollywood treatment. For a while it looks like it’s going on that direction, but Liberty Seed is ultimately not the villain in AT ANY PRICE.  Henry, a grinning backstabber who cheats on his wife and has the business ethic and false modesty of a slimy used-car salesman, is. Dean, introduced shooting out an auto parts store window to steal an engine, isn’t much better.  He’s a petulant punk with a dangerous temper who treats his adoring girlfriend Cadence (Maika Monroe) like dirt. The father-son relationship drives the entire film but it’s all so dark and ethically muddy. Henry and Dean are with self-centered and ruthless characters at the  center of a story where they create their own problems.

Instead going in a political or environmental adirection, Hallie Elizabeth Newton’s script for AT ANY PRICE turns up the heat on the melodrama (at the expense of credibility) with a contrived late-act murder and hide-the-body shenanigans to bring the Whipple family closer together. Quaid, with his politician’s pasted-on smile is a pompous ass, the opposite of the noble farmer usually portrayed by Hollywood, but the actor is so good here, he elevates the spotty script. Efron is okay though his surly pretty-boy rebel shtick gets tiresome. Heather Graham shines as the town slut, a character who exists to do nothing except get boned by both father and son. A powerful Clancy Brown lends the film gravity in a small role as a grieving rival seed farmer. The racetrack scenes are gritty and exciting, and Bahrani well-captures the details of rural life with scenes of dewy summer mornings and endless fields of grain silos and bright green corn. Despite its flawed script and morally baffling conclusion (instead of comeuppance, the Whipple’s many crimes are rewarded), AT ANY PRICE is an engrossing drama and is recommended.

4 of 5 Stars

AT ANY PRICE open in St. Louis Friday, May 17th at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Theater