An ambitious Iowa seed farmer (Dennis Quaid) tries to get his resentful son (Zac Efron) interested in the family business, but the son has his sights set on becoming a professional race car driver. When the business is threatened by an unexpected crisis, the relationship between them is tested.
Bahrani seems less interested in getting at the heart of a man who has sold his soul than he is in showing how the hard facts of modern farming have literally and figuratively changed the landscape.
Bahrani fills the frame with weathered faces and "At Any Price" feels like it unfolds in something close to the real America. But he wants to give us larger-than-life drama, and his strengths are life-sized.
It clumsily showcases an environmental issue -- in this case, the corporate strong-arm tactics used to promote GMOs -- through routine interpersonal drama.
Written and played with a little more subtlety, Henry and his contradictions could have been fascinating; as it is, "At Any Price" keeps us at a distance, gazing at characters who never quite come to life.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
May 16, 2013
Like the small farmers forced to kowtow to corporations, writer and director Ramin Bahrani chickens out. His melodramatic script reduces a global conflict to a Grain Belt "Glengarry Glen Ross."
The disappointment and malaise of a modern farmer's life comes through, but almost as an afterthought. As Bahrani makes clear, it's worth a more focused film.
