De Leon Clarence A.

BSHM2-C

THE FOUNDER

The Founder” is enthralled by its hero, Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), the man who founded the
McDonald’s chain, but horrified by how he amassed his empire. Such ambivalence is excellent; in fact, it
is a defining characteristic of good drama. But there are too many instances where “The Founder”
succumbs to the business-drama version of the Francois Truffaut problem with war movies: it’s difficult
to make a truly anti-war movie because war is intrinsically cinematic, and when you show it, audiences
are drawn in by the action nevertheless.Many business-related movies wind up struggling with
Truffaut’s war movie difficulty because even though the bloodshed in business dramas is (typically)
metaphorical, the struggle is nevertheless exciting. The characters in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Wall
Street,” “Wolf of Wall Street,” “Boiler Room,” and similar films are the kinds of people you’d cross a
room to avoid, but you still hear quotes from them from businesspeople and b-school students. This is
probably because it's more entertaining to Identify with the bozo who accomplishes things than the
people who suffer as a result of his actions. Gordon Gekko of the local Chamber of Commerce, Ray Kroc.
Even if the film is horrified by Ray’s shady actions, it is also riveted by Keaton’s laser-beam focus in his
performance.The character of Kroc, as written by Robert Siegel (“The Wrestler”), portrayed by Keaton
(“The Rookie”), initially resembles either the protagonist of “Death of a Salesman,” Willy Loman, or one
of the real estate agents in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” who complains that they can’t close deals because
the leads are weak. He is seen making cold calls to restaurant owners while attempting to sell them
mixers from the trunk of his car. He then returns home to receive encouragement from his wife, Ethel
(Laura Dern). By the end of the story, he’s transformed into the Charles Foster Kane of hamburgers—a
bland megalomaniac surrounded by enablers and worshipers, in charge of a company he founded by
taking advantage of Richard and Maurice McDonald’s optimism and trust.McDonald (Nick Offerman and
John Carroll Lynch), who accepted a handshake agreement that Kroc never kept, were bought out at an
unfair price and denied future earnings.The McDonald brothers are portrayed in “The Founder” in a
devastating way; every step on their path to ruin is marked and listed, from their consent to let Kroc
expand into other states to their capitulation to production and profit-making ideas that they fear will
transform the restaurant from a profitable but self-contained labor of love into a seller of unfrozen beef
patties and powdered shakes. The movie does such a good job of portraying the brothers’ relationship
as one built on a spirit of perseverance that when Kroc enters the scene and praises their concept for a
“fast food” restaurant with an assembly line service model, you can understand why they’d give in to his
idea of a centralized management structure.