Worth (2021) * * *

Directed by:  Sara Colangelo

Starring:  Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, Amy Ryan, Laura Benanti, Chris Tardio, Tate Donovan

What is a life worth?  This question is posed by attorney Kenneth Feinberg (Keaton) to his law class.  He watches his students negotiate with each other over a person's price tag.   Then, 9/11 happens and with lives lost and others maligned forever, Kenneth's query is put the ultimate test.   Congress soon implements the 9/11 Victims' Compensation Fund in order to compensate families of 9/11 victims and also to head off lawsuits of the airline industry which may cripple the economy.  Feinberg volunteers to head up the distribution of funds, relishing the challenge of coming up with a formula which will make every victim's family members' happy.   He finds this is not the case.  One size does not fit all.  

Should a CEO at the height of his earning power when the Twin Towers collapsed be paid more than a dishwasher working in a restaurant in the same building earning a fraction of the CEO's salary?   Is the suffering greater for a firefighter's family than a delivery person's?   While his overworked staff listens to the testimony of the families he needs to sign up for the fund before the signup deadline, Kenneth stays aloof and above the fray.   He doesn't feel the need to sit with these grieving families and hear their stories.   He  urges them to take the money and run because lawsuits against the airlines will take years and most certainly bankrupt them long before the airlines will settle.   However, these families don't necessarily want compensation.   They see accepting a payday as an insult to the memory of their loved ones.  

Feinberg's aloofness is hit home when he is busy listening to an opera on his headphones while the rest of the passengers on the commuter train to work look out the window astonished at the smoke from the World Trade Center towers.   Keaton is his usual effective self, finding out he is unable to wheel and deal his way into the hearts and minds of the families.   His most outspoken opponent is businessman Charles Wolf (Tucci), whose wife perished in the towers and starts a website called FixTheFund.org.   Charles, with sheer intelligence and sympathy, is able to convince people not to sign up for the fund until its compensation can be just for all.   Kenneth resists until his deadline to sign up eighty percent of eligible families approaches and he is nowhere near that goal.   Tucci doesn't play Wolf as an injured blowhard, but as a caring man who sees what Kenneth cannot...that no one formula can fit each family's unique situation.  He tries in vain to have Kenneth see the error of his ways.   

The beginning of Worth made me wonder how interest can be gleaned from such material.   A drama about a compensation fund?   It couldn't possibly work.   Worth does, although some of the subplot resolutions lean towards the unconvincingly melodramatic.   But Worth is intelligent and perceptive, focusing rightly on the victims and not the lawyers.   How they found ways to move on and live their lives in the face of such overwhelming sorrow makes them the real heroes.