Lawrence Garfield, a corporate raider, essentially decides to take over a company and sell the assets. Before buying the company, he had to go through the drawn out process of gaining the buy, dealing with the company's lawyer (who he ends up falling in love with), and having the shareholders vote who keeps the company. All of this, besides falling in love, is the Entrepreneurial business game that is constantly played. The entire movie was interesting for the simple fact that it was like watching two businessmen play checkers with deals to agree on.
Every character was quick witted and determined to win the game. For these reasons, I found the movie rather interesting. A lot of the same things happen in real life, like lawyers coming up with deals that will put them in the lead to win the case, under the table deals happening so that someone will keep their money or make more, and people tend to lose their jobs. Whatever the decision is made out to be, it affects the shares, which affects the market, which affects the people. I found the romantic aspect of the movie very interesting as well, simply because it was also portrayed as a game where the man chases the women even though they are on opposing sides. They both knew that one person was going to be taken down and they kept every interaction specifically business no matter how romantic of a setting it was.
Garfield buying out the company affected society negatively because it put many people out of work, but it raised a better deal for the shareholders putting money in their pockets when the company gets liquidated. At the end of the movie, Garfield is noticeably distraught even though he won the case. He made the money he knew he would get but he lost the woman he loved. Weeks go by and he receives a call from the Lawyer he loves; she offers him a final proposal stating that an automobile company in Japan is interested in working with the company that was liquidated and she wants Garfield to sell back the company and still gain a profit. Society didn't support Garfields decision with buying out the company, but the Shareholders did. I would even say that Garfield went out of his way to negatively impact society simply because he was only looking to make more money. Whether it was his own or someone else's, he always found a way to make more money. Like I said in the beginning, the movie really portrayed game-like interactions within every scene. Every interaction, every deal made or denied, even every company point raised half of a percent, was all a piece of the game being moved around to see what the opponent would do next. When the company's Lawyer first went to speak with Garfield and set an agreement to give her two weeks, he broke the deal as soon as she left because he knew that she was playing him to get ahead.
