cinematters
g
MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM’S GREED IS, by turns, a flashback-laden biography; a ticktock on a terrible billionaire’s 60th birthday bash in Greece; a flabby commentary on wealth inequality; and a pallid drama on family dynamics. There may have been another one or two iterations before fatigue arrived and the film ended. The best part gets the shortest amount of time, the rise of Sir Richard McCreadie’s business success, which starts with him as a irritable prep school student who runs illegal poker games and uses magic tricks to steal his classmates’ pocket money. It’s a fitting harbinger of what’s to come, more so since his mother—an acidic force of personality who uses her wealth as a middle finger—is an ally. She’s played by the peerless Shirley Henderson, who is used early and then phased out as the movie staggers onward. McCreadie grows up, assembles a retail empire form a credit scheme, and is played by the wonderful Steve Coogan. Of course, he’s a bottomless asshole with fluorescent choppers. I am by no means a Winterbottom completist, but I find he excels when he sits back and lets the talent run the show. Witness the hilarious Trip films with Coogan and comedian
22
PETE CROATTO
Greed Rob Brydon portraying themselves as two selfobsessed bozos traipsing through Europe oblivious to their obnoxiousness and fully aware that their best days are behind them. In Greed, the commentary is shoved in our faces, such as when the clueless journalist (David Mitchell) writing McCreadie’s authorized biography learns how his subject built his fortune from a business journalist, or the epilogue featuring troubling facts about billionaires. It’s exposition without wit. The characters should present the commentary via dialogue and actions, but Winterbottom sketches everything out for us instead of letting the absurdity unfold, the least of which is Sir Richard hastily constructing a replica of the Coliseum in a land teeming with ruins. In a career defined by his portrayal of selfimportant dimwits for decades, Sir Richard should be Coogan’s Hamlet. But he’s shoved aside for watered-down social commentary expressed by an ungainly Altmanian parade of supporting characters crammed to fit some kind of esteemed ensemble quota: the moody, neglected teenage son, played by Hugo’s Asa Butterfield; the doddering, schlubby journalist; the bystander with a conscious. No one is our
ICON | MARCH 2020 | ICONDV.COM | FACEBOOK.COM/ICONDV
proxy. By the time that character emerges—one of Sir Richard’s many handlers, a sympathetic young woman played by Dinita Gohil—we’ve lost interest. And then she gets parlayed into another tidy parable. If the characters are not sieves, they’re inconsistent. McCreadie’s vacuous ex-trophy wife (Isla Fisher) suddenly grows an intellect. The moron journalist, presumably writing a puffy celebrity biography, probes like he’s Michael Lewis. The world is on fire right now, but Winterbottom wants to cover nearly every spark: the horrible working conditions in Sri Lankan clothing factories; Syrian refugees who call Greece’s public beaches home, who ruin McCreadie’s party plans; the contrived shallowness of reality television. Greed is so top-heavy on important contemporary ideas that none carry potency. I can’t imagine how intolerable this would have been without Coogan. He’s a profane, daft delight as Sir Richard, who makes deals as if he’s owed everything plus the change on your bedroom table. Greed provides an opportunity to savor Coogan’s above-it-all wink-wink smarm, the lone touch of wit in Winterbottom’s spraypaint-by-numbers approach. [R] n
