The Founder

The story of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), the man who discovered the McDonald’s burger joint in the late 50s then bought it off the founders and grew the business into the huge thing it is today.

OK here’s another corporate origin tale, albeit one that surely can’t have been approved by McDonald’s. It paints a picture of a man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and that is the man who bought and built McDonald’s. This is all at the expense of the original founders who invented the 30-second burger system, valued quality over quantity and got shafted out of their own business by Ray Kroc.

And yet you can’t help but think that The Founder kind of wants to paint Kroc as a well-meaning businessman just trying to make a living. Benefit of the doubt, perhaps we are just seeing the world through Kroc’s eyes, but given that some of the film happens from the point of view of the McDonald’s brothers it just seems like the tone is really confused.

It’s not a story I was familiar with though, and muddled tone aside it’s still interesting to see the morally bankrupt business machinations that built one of the world’s biggest corporations.