An impressively slick and slimy performance from Javier Bardem is the standout selling point for this serviceable if (perhaps appropriately?) workaday satire on corporate corruption and alienated capitalism. Reuniting with writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa, with whom he made 2002’s highly acclaimed Mondays in the Sun and the 2017 biographical crime drama Loving Pablo, Bardem dominates the screen in a role that exploits his ability to combine smarmy charm with reptilian repugnance. He may be all smiles, but Bardem’s antihero hides petty menace behind his executive specs, topped off with a bland paternalist hairdo that weirdly evokes the pudding-bowled killer from No Country for Old Men in what would presumably be his “silver fox” period.
Described by its director as both “a tragicomic tale of a worn-out labour ecosystem” and “the reverse angle shot of Mondays in the Sun”, The Good Boss casts Bardem as Blanco, suave chief of a provincial company that makes industrial scales and that claims to treat its workforce like family. We meet Blanco delivering a morale-boosting address to the troops that is almost instantly revealed to be all show – a condescending performance designed to land a regional government award for “business excellence”. Blanco’s wall of prizes is already groaning, but a space waits expectantly for this last piece of the self-aggrandisement puzzle. If only Blanco can maintain a balanced air of tranquil serenity for the judges, then the prize is his for the taking.
