Director John Lee Hancock brings us another interesting perspective on a historical figure in The Founder, a look at the founder of the McDonald’s Corporation, Ray A. Kroc, played with a strong sense of subtlety & introspection by Michael Keaton.

In 2010, filmgoers were treated to The Social Network, a film based on the rise to prominence of Facebook and the behind the scenes machinations of its founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin. Directed by David Fincher and writter by Aaron Sorkin, the film examined how one of the founders was systematically erased from the history of the company and the other took the lion’s share of the credit. In many ways, John Lee Hancock’s biopic The Founder follows similarly in that mold. The Founder shows us the rise of an American institution, in this case, McDonald’s, and the rise and fall of the restaurant’s founders, “Mac” McDonald (John Carroll Lynch) and Richard McDonald (Nick Offerman) and the first Midwest franchisee, Ray A. Kroc, played by Michael Keaton.

Keaton plays Kroc as a man looking to write his own destiny. He’s sold every kind of product there is and is making his living selling milkshake machines for Prince Castle in the mid 1950’s. As he fails to sell macine after machine, he calls into his office where he hears about a restaurant in California that ordered 6 milkshake machines. He calls them, thinking the order was an error; it is, they actually want eight. So Kroc drives to California and finds this miracle of assembly line cooking in McDonald’s. Kroc takes the brothers out for dinner and they explain their story of how they came to create this chain and Kroc falls in love with it and wants to franchise. Kroc convinces his long suffering wife (Laura Dern) that this restaurant is what they need. But problems arise and Ray sees that due to his contract, the McDonald’s brothers hold a massive amount of control over him and the large amount of franchisees Kroc brings under their umbrella. An amount of control that Kroc’s bank account and his ego cannot handle.

Ostensibly, The Founder is about how schisms form between business partners. As the McDonald brothers concentrate on keeping standards high with their flagship restaurant, Ray is concerned about having enough capital to expand his business and maintain profitability. At the same time, other franchisees offer Kroc ideas to increase profitability, like using milkshake mix instead of real ice cream; but the McDonalds brothers won’t hear it. Here is where Kroc makes the choice that makes him the eventual founder of The McDonald’s Corporation, he stops concentrating on selling hamburgers, but instead on buying and selling the land that the McDonald’s will be built on to sell those hamburgers.

Keaton’s performance as Kroc is spectacular. He is ostensibly the antagonist of the film, but he’s likeable and relatable. One could clearly see why he makes his choices and when his ego gets out of hand, its not difficult to see why he feels he is justified in his actions. Offerman and Lynch looks the part of the McDonald brothers; although Offerman channels his inner Parks and Recreation role as Ron a bit much, making him seem a bit of a caricature. But overall, the film’s art direction is excellent recreating the period. Given the cooperation of the Kroc estate, the film doesn’t really villify Kroc as much as The Social Network did with Zuckerberg. But for the most part, The Founder is an interesting portrait of a unique American entrepreneurial character with a lynchpin performance by Keaton that makes the film a definite must-see