At first glance, the trailer for At Any Price looks like it’s advertising a melodramatic movie that takes a mock-heroic look at being a farmer, but when you see that this thing has been directed by Ramin Bahrani, the guy who made minimal but affecting work like Chop Shop, Man Push Cart, and Goodbye Solo, you know there has to be something else there. And having seen this one at last year’s TIFF, I can confirm that there is indeed something else there.
In between this trailer’s fast-cutting of fist fights, yelling, and make-out sessions, you can catch glimpses of the story at the heart of the film. It’s not only one of fathers and sons, and the pains and pressures that they put on one another, but it’s one of the pressures put on the modern farmer, and how big corporations are taking over the business of producing our food and forcing the people who have been producing it up to this point to either get big too or get out of the way. Like each of Bahrani’s works to date, this one is a real eye-opener.
But, at the same time, you can see all of that stuff about Zac Efron racing cars, raising hell, and kissing Heather Graham that shows up in this trailer, and there’s no denying that his subplot gets a little cheesy and is the clumsiest stuff Bahrani has given us as a filmmaker to date. Still though, look at the work Dennis Quaid is doing here. Quaid is always good, and this one gives him the meatiest material he’s had to work with in quite a while. Give At Any Price a chance. Give it a chance because of Dennis Quaid. And America.
It hits theaters on April 26. [Yahoo! Movies]