The Founder

The Founder (2016) — watch online the biographical drama directed by John Lee Hancock, with Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the Illinois milkshake-machine salesman who hijacked a California burger stand and turned it into McDonald's. 115 minutes, USA.

It's 1954 and Kroc is going nowhere fast. Then a single order for eight mixers leads him to a San Bernardino drive-in run by brothers Nick and Dick McDonald. Their system is something he has never seen: a burger in thirty seconds, no carhops, no china plates, no waiting. Kroc sees a global empire where the brothers see a tidy local business. He convinces them to let him franchise it. They shake hands. That handshake costs them everything.

Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch play the McDonald brothers as men quietly ground up by their own invention, while Keaton makes Kroc's relentless drive feel both admirable and predatory. Screenwriter Robert Siegel lets the audience draw its own conclusions. Stream The Founder (2016) online on iFILM.