The Founder –Film Review - The origin of America's most famous restaurant (may contain spoilers)
This is the rags to riches to further mega riches true story of Ray Kroc, a documentary drama starring America's most famous restaurant chain and Michael Keaton.
Michael Keaton plays the part of Ray Kroc, a struggling travelling salesman, his door to door appointments often ended in rejection. One day he checks into the office and is told of an order for 6 machines! He believes this is a mistake so checks the order and travels across America to visit the McDonalds brothers, while there he is offered a tour of the kitchen. There it takes 30 seconds to assemble a completely uniform burger, Ray realises the carefully choreographed kitchen efficiency is so amazing that he wants to franchise this revolutionary idea and puts himself in charge of this.
At first you really want Ray to succeed but soon learn that his devious, cut-throat methods make him an unlikable character. He is completely driven by greed, and it's obvious that he cares about no one but himself. The brothers' draw up a contract with Ray and here we start to sense that there will be many business conflicts to come.
Later in the film Ray meets a lawyer who convinces him to buy the land the restaurants were built on, Ray soon realises that he was no longer in the food business but in the real estate business and the film takes a darker turn.
There are more conflicts, heated arguments and slamming of phones. The brothers become increasingly worried about their new partner. One quote that demonstrate this … "There's a wolf in the hen-house and we let him in". Ray certainly takes the idea and makes the "McDonald's" name into a global corporate phenomenon but his methods were extremely ugly.
The film makes you question whether the McDonald's brothers (who just wanted to preserve their integrity), were actually a burden on their company, or was Ray a commercial genius who was overly greedy with questionable business ethics? This is in a similar atmosphere to 'Steve Jobs', 'The Social Network' and more recently 'Gold'.
You may not want to visit another McDonalds after seeing this film?
7/10.
Michael Keaton plays the part of Ray Kroc, a struggling travelling salesman, his door to door appointments often ended in rejection. One day he checks into the office and is told of an order for 6 machines! He believes this is a mistake so checks the order and travels across America to visit the McDonalds brothers, while there he is offered a tour of the kitchen. There it takes 30 seconds to assemble a completely uniform burger, Ray realises the carefully choreographed kitchen efficiency is so amazing that he wants to franchise this revolutionary idea and puts himself in charge of this.
At first you really want Ray to succeed but soon learn that his devious, cut-throat methods make him an unlikable character. He is completely driven by greed, and it's obvious that he cares about no one but himself. The brothers' draw up a contract with Ray and here we start to sense that there will be many business conflicts to come.
Later in the film Ray meets a lawyer who convinces him to buy the land the restaurants were built on, Ray soon realises that he was no longer in the food business but in the real estate business and the film takes a darker turn.
There are more conflicts, heated arguments and slamming of phones. The brothers become increasingly worried about their new partner. One quote that demonstrate this … "There's a wolf in the hen-house and we let him in". Ray certainly takes the idea and makes the "McDonald's" name into a global corporate phenomenon but his methods were extremely ugly.
The film makes you question whether the McDonald's brothers (who just wanted to preserve their integrity), were actually a burden on their company, or was Ray a commercial genius who was overly greedy with questionable business ethics? This is in a similar atmosphere to 'Steve Jobs', 'The Social Network' and more recently 'Gold'.
You may not want to visit another McDonalds after seeing this film?
7/10.
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