Human Capital

Stephen Amidon's 2004 novel had already been filmed once, in Italy, where Paolo Virzì turned it into 'Il capitale umano' and picked up several awards at home. 'Human Capital' brings the story back to America, with a script by Oren Moverman, an Oscar nominee for 'The Messenger', and Marc Meyers directing after 'My Friend Dahmer'. It's an ensemble drama built around a car accident, and under it runs one blunt question: what is a human life worth when everything has a price?

It opens on a dark road. A waiter cycling home after working a gala dinner is hit by an SUV that speeds off into the night. The film then winds back to the days before and tells them from three points of view. First comes Drew Hagel, an estate agent whose business isn't going well. Dropping his daughter Shannon at her boyfriend's mansion, he meets the boy's father, hedge fund manager Quint Manning, and decides he has to get in, even though the minimum stake is $300,000 he doesn't have and his wife Ronnie is expecting twins.

The second chapter belongs to Carrie, Quint's wife, a former actress from cheap horror films who fills her days with a plan to save an old theatre and turn it into an arts centre. The third is Shannon's. She has secrets of her own, and she's drawn to Ian, a troubled young man who is one of Ronnie's patients. Every rewind adds pieces to what happened that night, and who was behind the wheel ends up mattering less than what each of them will do to stay safe.

Liev Schreiber, who also produced, plays Drew. Peter Sarsgaard and Marisa Tomei, an Oscar winner for 'My Cousin Vinny', are the Mannings, and Maya Hawke, daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman and best known from 'Stranger Things', plays Shannon. Alex Wolff ('Hereditary'), Betty Gabriel ('Get Out'), Fred Hechinger, Aasif Mandvi and Paul Sparks fill out the cast. Trudie Styler was among the producers, and it was shot in late 2018 on Long Island, standing in for upstate New York.

It premiered at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival. With cinemas shutting for the pandemic, it went out in the US on DirecTV Cinema in March 2020, followed by a limited cinema run that July. In the UK it can be rented or bought on Apple TV. Reviews were lukewarm: critics praised the cast, Hawke above all, but felt it fell short of the Italian version and that the mystery resolves without much of a punch.

• Drama
• Thriller