The trailer for Worth (Netflix 9.3) indicates quality — a thoughtful, low-key drama about the experience of Kenneth Feinberg (Michael Keaton), an attorney who was appointed to administrate the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. His task was to decide which amounts certain families of 9/11 victims would be paid as compensation.
Feinberg followed a certain impartial formula (including, I’ve read, a refusal to evaluate individual suffering), some families received less than others, and there was some resentment about this.
The film is based upon a book Feinberg wrote a book about this experience, titled “What Is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11.”
Keaton and Tucci costarred in Spotlight (although they didn’t share any scenes), and one of the Worth producers, Michael Sugar, had a producing credit on Spotlight.
Alas, after debuting at Sundance 2020 Worth received a 65% and 68% rating from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively. That was nearly 20 months ago.
On top of which the film’s screenwriter-producer, Max Borenstein, is best known for writing Godzilla (’14) and Kong: Skull Island (’17), and contributing to the story of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (’19) and Godzilla vs. Kong (’21). How do all these monsters square with compensating the families of 9.11 victims?
Besides Keaton, the cast includes Stanley Tucci, Amy Ryan, Tate Donovan, Laura Benanti, Talia Balsam, Marc Maron, Chris Tardio and Victor Slezak.