Glengarry Glen Ross Response
Glengarry Glen Ross is a depiction of the actions men will take when they are under too much pressure and their backs are against a wall. It is also a commentary on the inner workings of corporate America and the brutal hierarchies that are built. Glengarry Glen Ross is about a group of salesmen whose sales are down and are about to be fired if they don’t bring them back up. The problem is, the system is rigged. Most of what is needed to make consistent sales is good leads. However, only the people who are already on the top of the pyramid get the decent leads, the Glengarry leads. Those who are on the bottom get useless leads that they have no chance of selling to. Because of this, those on the bottom have no way of ever working their way up the ladder. With the prospect of being fired looming above their heads and only terrible leads to work with, the men are willing to do anything for a sale, including rob the office.
Dave Moss, a salesman played by Ed Harris, comes up with a plan to steal the glengarry leads out of their office building and sell them to a competing real estate agency. He attempts to coerce a coworker, George Aaronow, into helping him pull of the robbery. He tells Aaronow that by listening to his plan he is already accomplice and that he will be the one to go into the office while Moss goes and gets himself an alibi. Not only is Moss willing to commit a robbery, he is willing to betray his friend. In the end we find out that Aaronow still refuses and Moss recruits Shelley Levene to be his accomplice. He is caught because he lets slip that he knows that the Office Manager, Mr. Williamson, left the contracts on his desk the night before instead of taking them to the bank as usual. This indicates that he was the one who broke into the office. I found the uncovering of this fact particularly tragic because of its timing. Levene’s luck had just changed that morning when he landed a 82,000 dollar sale and the top salesman, Richard Roma, expressed his admiration and said that they should team up and work together. Everything would have turned around for him, but instead he was going to prison.
I had mixed feelings towards the characters in this movie. It is hard to sympathize with them because they don’t really come off as good people. They are sleazy characters, willing to trick people out of their money, step on their friends, and commit crimes just to get paid. On the other hand, they are stuck in a bad situation. They have families who depend on them to survive, they are on the brink of being laid off, and their managers are refusing to help them by giving them decent leads. When you put a person’s back against the wall, you cannot really blame them for doing what they have to do to get by.