townnfarmgirl As an Iowan married to a farmer I was hoping that this would be a good movie. I was so bored and cared so little what happened to the characters in the story line I turned it off at minute 25. I can't remember the last movie I didn't at least try to suffer through. MAYBE it got better later in the movie, but I doubt it. The only redeeming quality about this movie was the landscape and mention of little towns and counties that I recognized, but it was filmed in Illinois so there was obviously nothing recognizable as uniquely Iowan (and yes, there are landmarks and sites that are uniquely Iowan). That's 25 minutes I'll never get back.

napierslogs "At Any Price" is a small Midwestern film about a small Midwestern family in a small Midwestern town. It translates well for any farming community. It also translates well for any character study fans, but it's the thrilling elements that should have been heightened to make it a better movie overall.Dennis Quaid stars as Henry Whipple a determined business man failing in the farming business and Zac Efron as Dean Whipple who wants to be doing anything other than following in his father's footsteps. He's also the son who stayed who gets to watch his parents dote after the possible arrival of his older brother who went to find himself on a whirlwind adventure around the world. Dean is stuck in Iowa trying to find himself while being groomed for the family farm but wanting to race a car around a track in circles.As a character study, it had the perfect set-up with both Quaid and Efron playing the troubled Whipple men with half-assed smiles on their faces and fear in their eyes. But "At Any Price" isn't a character study; it's a thriller. The mysterious score starts early on and keeps you guessing when something dark or sinister is going to occur. Sub- plots are introduced with Dean's attention-starving girlfriend and Henry's illegal activities. And while they do eventually lead to something interesting, they're hardly interesting themselves and could have been tightened up significantly.And then comes the thriller climax and the character study climax when father and son finally have something to connect with. But as the thriller climax, it just kind of happened with no additional build-up or intrigue and it made everything that came before it a little less interesting then it was before. A decent movie about the flailing Whipple men just went out with a whimper. "At Any Price" is decent as a small indie film but it needed to be tightened up with more significance to the on-going events to be a good movie.

valis1949 AT ANY PRICE (dir. Ramin Bahrani) If the film had just developed a single tangent, such as the troubled relationship between a father and son without all the other thematic distractions, it might have worked. Dennis Quaid turns in an exceptional performance as a GMO mega-farmer whose family has owned the land for four generations, yet no one in his family seems the slightest bit interested in continuing in the business of farming. However, because so many story angles are opened up and explored, the film loses focus. There's the story of the two sons- one is off climbing mountains in South America while the other aspires to excel on the NASCAR circuit, and then there is the sub-plot of the father's questionable dealings with genetically modified crop seeds, his sexual infidelity with one of his old high school cheerleader pals (by the way, they don't appear to have attended high school within two decades of each other), and the 'professional' relationship with his youngest son's teen-aged girlfriend (possibly the brightest point of the film). And finally there's that unfortunate second degree homicide that pops up out of the blue. It seems that the intent was to produce a film where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts, but AT ANY PRICE flounders and struggles with a handful of disparate elements that don't add up to much of anything except a credible performance by Dennis Quaid. As Archie Bell and The Drells used to say, 'Do The Tighten Up!'

mdixon after watching I was surprised by its low IMDb rating (5.6 currently). I liked it, it held my attention, felt on its own it was entertaining and was one of those I think to myself "I'm glad I watched that". I'm not a film critic or film-making buff so don't know mechanically what makes a movie good, it's more a thing of you know it when you see it.to be fair before writing this I read some of the less favorable reviews and can see they have their points. but in imd-land the mid-5s kinds of movies are getting into the range where a movie is clearly not well-thought of and it's hard to see how that can be true of this one. also I don't watch previews/trailers or really read much besides the brief IMDb synopsis at the top so maybe my lack of expectation helps.I watched this because I like dennis quaid, he's one of those actors that on the screen I find easy to like and his performances are usually good. this isn't the kind of role I'm used to seeing from him (the clever/charming/gregarious kind of guy) but I thought he played it quite well.the overarching theme seems to be there's no overarching theme. it was more or less an hour and a half of stuff involving people that happened to be in iowa, some of which happened to be farmers. it didn't seem to me it was pushing any kind of viewpoint, we just get to witness some unusual things that can make one think "what would I have done in that spot?" it almost had the dryness of a documentary in that there's no crescendos (musically or otherwise) trying to tell the audience what to feel where. to me the movie was more about what's inside the characters rather than what happens externally when they interact. from that standpoint I wasn't put off by some of the disjointedness other reviewers rightfully point out.I did notice in hindsight once the movie was over that much of it seemed formulaic and had many of the kinds of twists every other movie has, but what struck me was being engrossed enough that as it unfolded I didn't really notice until it was over with.bottom line for me is it was entertaining and worth the time spent watching it.