Movie Review: Greed

Greed ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom.

Written by: Michael Winterbottom and Sean Gray.

Starring: Steve Coogan (Sir Richard McCreadie), Isla Fisher (Samantha), Shirley Henderson (Margaret), David Mitchell (Nick), Asa Butterfield (Finn), Dinita Gohil (Amanda), Sophie Cookson (Lily), Jamie Blackley (Young Richard McCreadie), Shanina Shaik (Naomi), Jonny Sweet (Jules), Sarah Solemani (Melanie), Tim Key (Sam), Asim Chaudhry (Frank the Lion Tamer), Ollie Locke (Fabian), Pearl Mackie (Cathy), Kareem Alkabbani (Kareem). 

 

Perhaps the superrich have simply become impossible to satirize. In real life, many of these billionaires – like Elon Musk – already seem like cartoon caricatures of the elite and out of touch, that to try and make them oversized and cartoonish is impossible. Still, I do think that a better satire of the superrich could have been made other than Michael Winterbottom’s Greed – whose main character is named Richard McCreadie, which of course it takes very little to turn into Rich McGreedy. That’s basically the level of satire going on in this film. That it works as well as it does is a testament to the skills of Steve Coogan, and his supporting cast among them Isla Fisher, Shirley Henderson, Sophie Cookson, and Jamie Blackley. But the film never quite comes off as the fuck you to the superrich that it was clearly intended to be.

 

Coogan plays McCreadie, who has become a billionaire in the retail space in England – opening, and closing, one clothing franchise after another. Mostly its cheap clothes, and the franchises don’t last – but he is able to make a lot of money for himself and his family, before they collapse. The film attempts something like The Big Short, but is more akin Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, as it explains the various ways McCreadie makes a lot of money out of companies, that aren’t making a lot of money. He sells off the land his stores sit on for huge sums of money, then leases the properties back. He then borrows money on the value of the company that is no worth a lot less because they don’t own the land, and filters it back to himself. The companies worth plummets, but his personal worth soars.

 

The film is built around the preparations for McCreadie’s 60^th Birthday party – which will be in Greece, and based on Gladiator, so he’s building his own temporary coliseum. His various family members come to see him – the ex-wife (Fisher) he clearly still loves, but left for a younger woman anyway. His reality TV show daughter (Cookson), whose show is as scripted as any on TV. His son, Asa Butterfield, who doesn’t really like anyone, etc. McCreadie has been embroiled in some scandals – and the A-listers keep dropping out. But he forges ahead anyway.

 

Coogan has made a career out of playing rich assholes – including versions of himself for Winterbottom in The Trip movies (the fourth, and apparently final one, is coming out this month). He certainly makes McCreadie into an asshole – we see flashbacks to him as a younger man screaming at underlings, and his immense wealth hasn’t made him any nicer. What Coogan is always able to do though is show the sad, pathetic man inside – the real person behind the asshole mask. He does that here to some extent as well – but it also kind of clashes with the over-the-top nature of the film.

 

As a director, Winterbottom is both wildly prolific, and wildly uneven. He has collaborated well with Coogan over the years – The Trip movies, 24 Hour Party People (which was Coogan’s more dramatic breakthrough after a successful comic career on TV, The Look of Love (which I didn’t actually see) and best of all, for me anyway, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. He’s also made some brilliant literary adaptations – Jude (1996) and The Claim (2000) are probably his two best films for example. But for every great film, there is one that doesn’t quite work. Greed is one of those unfortunately. It’s all just too obvious to really cut close to the bone, and too broad to be really funny. A film like this is a tight rope act – and this time, Coogan and Winterbottom don’t pull it off.