Chad (played excellently by Aaron Eckhart) convinces his weak friend Howard (played well by Matt Malloy) to play a cruel trick on a woman in order to get back at women in general. Chad said that he was dumped by his girlfriend, as was Howard, and he's sick of women doing that kinda stuff.
Almost the entire movie is them playing this cruel trick, and the last fifteen minutes is what happens afterwards. At times, this movie is not easy to watch, especially when Chad commits an act that can be considered racist, but the true meaning seems to run much deeper.
The role of the victim is played by Stacy Edwards. She's cute, and she doesn't LOOK like the kind of person that Chad would want (he wanted the victim to be unattractive). As it turns out, she's deaf, and she's shy about what it sounds like when she talks. It winds up being a source of amusement for Chad.
"In the Company
of Men" was written and directed by Neil LaBute, and though I think he's
new to feature filmmaking, he obviously knows what he's doing. He writes
intelligent dialogue, and he knows how to keep a long, unmoving shot from
getting boring. Most importantly, he created a villain easy to hate, despite
the fact that we may know people just like him. As a matter of fact, we
ourselves may be just like him.