Review 599: The Founder

The Founder is a gripping biographical drama by a brilliant performance by Michael Keaton

 

Based on a true story, Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a salesman from Illinois meets Richard and Maurice McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Lynn Carroll), who were running a burger operation in 1950's Southern California. Kroc is impressed by the brothers' speedy system of making the food and saw franchise potential. He maneuvers himself into a position to be able to pull the company from the brothers and create a billion-dollar empire.

This film shows us the excitement that carries Kroc into MacDonalds being a corporation and the compromises that he makes along the way.

 

Free enterprise system, Capitalism and Bootstrap Entrepreneurial drive

 

Ray Kroc was the little guy trying to sell an idea. He knows that he's right because he sees all of these people sitting in the drive-ins with their meals. He was a man out of time - it's a Elvis Presley world and he's a Bing Crosby type. When we first meet Kroc, he's on a bit of a downward slope and not doing great because he's struggling to sell a milkshake machine. He sees that the order is larger than he had seen before, so he goes out to investigate it and essentially his mind is blown by what he finds and he sees the future.

The McDonald brothers were pretty much the Henry Ford of fast food. They stumbled onto a new system to fix the ills of the drive-in business which is what they were in when they started. But/yet they lacked the drive and ambition to really make their idea a reality. Kroc, on the other hand, saw a great idea and he was the guy who could multiply; He had the ambition and the drive to really take it worldwide. 

 

Post WWII, America was exploding with rock n' roll, cars and youth culture,

The Founder was directed by John Lee Hancock who previously directed The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks, both of those films had an more inspirational, uplifting feel to them when compared to this film which is arguably a lot darker given the nature of its protagonist  the score by Carter Burwell is