“Greed” is the sort of sharp-clawed satire that ends up scratching its target more than goring it. It’s a send-up of the billionaire class, the ultra-wealthy who make piles of dough by cheating other people, then cheating the government out of their taxes.
Steve Coogan plays Sir Richard “Greedy” McGreadie, who made his fortune in the high-fashion world of High Street, where all the tony British labels make their way. He’s a classic climber who came from good stock but poor finances, and quickly learned that you have to take chances and twist some elbows if you’re going to make it.
Written and directed by Michael Winterbottom, the story is framed around Richard preparing for a lavish 60th birthday party for himself. It’s to be held on a remote Mediterranean tax shelter, a land of yachts and self-entitlement.
Richard is divorced from Samantha (Isla Fisher), though they’re still very connected in a business sense and their spoiled children, Lily (Sophie Cookson) and Finn (Asa Butterfield). Also tagging along for the party are Richard’s hired biographer, Nick (David Mitchell), a meek sort who acts as the audience’s eyes and ears, and Amanda (Dinita Gohil), who’s organizing the party but has family back in India working in the very sweat shops Richard benefits from.
There’s a lot of funny stuff in the movie, from Richard’s orange-hued fake tan and blindingly white teeth veneers to the overstuffed way he’s constantly moving about, yelling at everyone and expecting the world to cater to his whims.
Unfortunately, the film takes a turn toward the serious in the last act that doesn’t really work. You can’t spend an hour-plus laughing at the buffoonish rich man and then suddenly turn him into a credible villain.
Trying to provoke your audience to both laughter and anger is just, well… greedy.
Not much extra in terms of bonus features. There’s a single deleted scene and a making-of documentary short. That’s it.
Tonally “Greed” is a sticky wicket. It seems very much to be a satirical send-up of the billionaire class from writer/director Michael Winterbottom starring his frequent muse, Steve Coogan, who have made the “Trip” series of movies and TV show together.
Wearing a gloriously saturated spray tan and glaringly white fake teeth, Coogan’s Sir Richard “Greedy” McCreadie is a buffoonish figure with a hint of steel underneath. A wheeler-dealer extraordinaire, McCreadie is the self-proclaimed master of High Street, the center of the British fashion world.
His MO is famous: he swoops in and buys up a clothing brand, strips it of all its key assets to line his own pockets, then washes his hands when the enterprise topples. He uses the nefarious but perfectly legal levers of finance to essentially use a company’s own value to buy itself, passing off one debt to cover another.
The story centers on preparations for McCreadie’s massive 60th birthday party in Monaco. It’s a Mediterranean mecca of wealth where the rich and famous park their yachts and their assets in its tax-free haven.
The shindig promises to be a bacchanalian feast of delights and pomposity. Everyone is to dress in ancient Greek clothing – Sir Richard is a big fan of the film “Gladiator” -- and they’re even building a Parthenon to witness staged fights with a real lion. Alas, the lion seems old and meek and the cut-rate Bulgarians brought in to do the job are mucking it up.
Isla Fisher plays Samantha, McCreadie’s ex-wife. She’s the very picture of unearned privilege. Despite their divorce they remain quite close, in no small part because his business enterprise uses her as the primary stakeholder for those aforementioned tax cheats.
And it’s clear the old fires still burn, despite the fact each has hooked up with a younger, hot companion.
A couple of other framing stores mix in: flashbacks to an interrogation before a British Parliament committee, during which McCreadie flashes his famous contempt for his perceived lessers (which is everybody). And a mild-mannered writer, Nick (David Mitchell), has been hired to write McCreadie’s “official biography, so he hangs around in the background acting as the audience’s eyes and ears.
Dinita Gohil plays Amanda, an Indian-Brit who acts as the tycoon’s majordomo, trying to handle a thousand details for the impending party. Shirley Henderson is McCreadie’s mother, who carefully isntalled the chip on his shoulder long ago. Asa Butterfield plays Finn, the son who openly despises his dad, musing about his affinity for Oedipus.
In one of the more amusing side bits, Sophie Cookson plays the pampered daughter, Lily, who is trying desperately to launch her own “famous for being famous” brand a la the Kardashians. (McCreadie is vexed to learn Kim is richer than he is.) She has a reality TV crew following her around to film staged turmoil with her boyfriend.
That’s the world of the McCreadies: faked and overpriced.
It’s a typically on-point performance for Coogan, but the story tends to go into respective cycles where he’s constantly raining verbal abuse upon his staff (without ever actually firing anyone, strangely) or twisting elbows making deals.
“Say four and shake my hand,” is his go-to move for lowball offers.
Toward the last third “Greed” grows much angrier and sadder, as we’re asked not just to resent McCreadie and giggle at his excesses but condemn him for the way he leaves a wake of ruined prospects behind him. Problem is, we’ve spent 70 minutes or so laughing at him so it’s hard to suddenly take him seriously as a villain.
The movie ends with what must be the longest string of title cards I’ve ever seen, with all sorts of facts and figures about how big-name fashion brands exploit workers in developing countries, paying them a few quid a day to make clothes that sell for a hundred times that.
Mixing rage and laughter is a very tough amalgamation, and not one “Greed” pulls off very well. Despite plenty of nice pieces, this movie is less than the sum of its parts.
"Who was using who? I was a shadow in a man's world. Invisible... but in the end, powerful."
--Joan Stanley
The "old" Joan in "Red Joan" is played by the incomparable Judi Dench, while the younger version -- who actually has the majority of the screen time -- is portrayed by Sophie Cookson, who reminded me a lot of Midge Wood, the bookworm girl played by Barbara Bel Geddes in "Vertigo."
They're clever, perpetually unappreciated women with obstinate chins who eventually undertake to assert themselves for what they want and the things they believe in. In Joan's case, this means spiriting atomic bomb secrets to the Russians during and after World War II.
"Red Joan" toys around with this fact for its first half, in a somewhat lackluster did-she-or-didn't-she game of storytelling cat-and-mouse. Of course, we know she'll be revealed as a spy in the end, as if common sense and the title of the movie didn't instruct us so.
What I found more interesting was how the Joan of the year 2000 has resolved the inner struggles of her self from 1938 and the years immediately thereafter. The film, written by Lindsay Shapero and directed by Trevor Nunn, depicts young Joan as struggling with the morality of her spying, manipulated by a pair of Russian émigré siblings who pick at her vulnerabilities.
By her 80s, though, Joan has mostly put away this part of her life. When her activities are discovered and investigated, she feigns ignorance before eventually embracing her role in a matter-of-fact way. She reminds her interlocutors that the Allies had promised to share their nuclear research with each other, but the Americans got to the atomic bomb first and quickly shut out the British-Canadian research team and the Russians.
I felt if everyone had the bomb, it was less likely they would use it on each other, she patiently explains to her shocked son (Ben Miles) -- essentially crediting herself as author of the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Even though we know where the movie is going to go, I was intrigued and entertained by the journey getting there. The story is loosely based on that of Melita Norwood, who passed on secrets to the Russians while employed as a secretary.
The Brits' counterpart to the Manhattan Project was codenamed Tube Alloys, which is a very British codename. Stephen Campbell More plays Max, the head of the research team who eventually falls for the much younger Joan.
Her heart, and also much of her head, still resides with Leo (Tom Hughes), the dreamy young Communist firebrand she met during her student days at Cambridge. He has a sort of slouchy charm, doing a lot of side-eye ogling at her through one of those floppy haircuts that falls into his eyes.
His sister, Sonya (Tereza Srbova), is the more subtle of the two, befriending Joan and encouraging her romance with Leo.
There's a lot of subtext about how Joan is denigrated for her gender, constantly being asked to fetch the coffee or run the fancy new clothes dryer when she actually has a degree in physics and is one of the sharpest tacks in the department. She's the first one to suggest a centrifuge to separate the radioactive material isotope thingee.
(OK, I'm not a science guy.)
It's a great-looking film, filled with vintage cars and clothes and street scenes. I also liked Freddie Gaminara as a socialist sympathizer who coasts on his title and privilege.
Dench is terrific as always, though Cookson makes the strongest impression. It's enervating to see a timid young thing blossom and grow in confidence, overcoming adversity even as others vie to bend her to their will. Joan does indeed bend, though more as a result of internal resolve than external pressure.
It's not every spy drama that depicts the traitor as the heroine. But "Red Joan" operates in the shadows of ambiguity and compromises.
A bit of charm and a lot of smash-mouth, “Kingsman: The Secret Service” was one of 2015’s earliest, and best, surprises.
This super-spy thriller/comedy operates as both a send-up and celebration of the 007 genre. Colin Firth plays Harry Hart, aka Galahad, a member of the sophisticated and ultra-secret spy agency knows as the Kingsmen. They prefer to do their bidding beneath the veil of anonymity, using all sorts of cool gadget hidden inside their signature dapper suits and eyeglasses.
Harry recruits rough-and-tumble street scamp Eggsy Unwin (Taron Egerton) to be his protégé, and the story is framed around the familiar training and initial missions of the new guy. It seems some nefarious force is taking out the Kingsmen one by one, so graduation will have to come early.
The bad guy is a Steve Jobs techie type, deliciously played by Samuel L. Jackson – a combination of computer nerd, gangster and maniacal villain. His henchwoman has two prosthetic legs outfitted with swords to dice up her victims.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, “Kingsman” has got terrific action scenes and also terribly funny ones. It’s a smart and energetic flick that evinces a tone somewhere between a smirk and a gasp. This is a movie that makes fun of spy movies, but loves them, too.
Video extras are pretty decent. There’s a gallery of photos of sets, props and behind-the-scenes peeks. There are also six making-of documentary featurettes: “Panel to Screen: The Education Of A 21st Century Super-Spy,” “Heroes And Rogues,” “Style All His Own,” “Tools Of The Trade,” “Breathtakingly Brutal” and “Culture Clash: The Comic Book Origins Of The Secret Service.”
Matthew Vaughn, the talented young filmmaker behind "Kick-Ass" and "X-Men: First Class," dropped out of directing last summer's "X-Men: Days of Future Past" to make this movie. In other words, he passed on a sure thing to make a film adaptation of a comic book hardly anyone has heard of about British super-spies, which is being released in the cinematic wasteland known as February.
Some might call that move questionable -- including Vaughn's agents, no doubt.
Then he went and did something even more dubious: he changed the name of the movie, based on the graphic novel "The Secret Service" by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar, to add the "Kingsman" moniker, and switched the story around so the spies all wear similar natty suits. He even commissioned a line of "Kingsman" clothing from a high-end clothier, so you can affect the same stylish look you saw star Colin Firth wearing.
(Want the wristwatch? It's only $24,430!)
Which essentially renders the entire movie an exercise in brash product placement. I'd be tempted to be disgusted, if the film weren't so dashingly, gleefully superb.
"Kingsman: The Secret Service" is a heaping squirt of hot sauce in the cinema calendar's equivalent of the salad course. It's a daffy, dizzy send-up of the James Bond genre that nonetheless checks off the list of everything we love about super-spy flicks.
It's got a suave, charismatic leading man (Firth), outstandingly staged action scenes, crazy gadgets, a mad global plot, and a terrifically strange villain who maintains a running commentary on the stupidity of movie villains. (Without, apparently, realizing that he is one.)
The set-up is that young Eggsy Unwin (Taron Egerton), a Cockney street tough, is recruited by the Kingsmen via Harry Hart (Firth), aka Galahad, who once had his life saved by Eggsy's dad. Harry has a cool intro scene where he takes out an entire pub full of thugs who want the lad's head using only his umbrella -- which, to be fair, has all sorts of super-power functions like stopping bullets when opened.
(If you think that's neat, wait'll you see what the watch can do.)
Soon Eggsy is going through super-spy school, competing with a bunch of high-class wankers to see who can claim the only open slot in the Kingsmen ranks. Or Kingswomen -- there are a couple of highly competent female recruits, too, including the resourceful Roxy (Sophie Cookson), who takes a shine to Eggsy's rough edges. Merlin (Mark Strong) is the veteran taskmaster and outfitter, while Arthur (Michael Caine) is the wise old leader.
Harry takes on Eggsy's tutelage personally, teaching him how to dress and behave and, above all, remain discreet. The Kingsmen are a privately funded intelligence agency, and take pride in having their exploits remaining unknown. "A gentleman's name should appear in the paper three times: when he's born, when he marries and when he dies," he instructs.
The heavy is Richmond Valentine, a ridiculously powerful tech billionaire who gives away his merchandise and Internet service for free, because he has a dastardly plot to... well, I won't spoil. Suffice to say his plan has a certain liberal Machiavellian purity, enough to convince most of the planet's prime movers and shakers to sign on.
Valentine is played by Samuel L. Jackson in a performance that is deliciously over the top... or under the top, or somewhere completely sideways of the top. He sprays his sibilants in a mighty lisp, dresses in slanted hats and neon pastels like a ghetto bopper who hit the lottery, and grows girlishly nauseous at even the hint of violence, despite setting quite a tidal wave of it in motion.
His henchwoman is, if possible, even more exotic. Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) has two prosthetic legs, the kind used in running known as blades, except hers are also outfitted with actual blades, which she uses to slice and dice her foes while spinning through the air with athletic aplomb. She makes Oddjob with his killer top hat seem positively pedestrian.
Co-written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, "Kingsman: The Secret Service" maintains a careful tone. It's incredibly funny, yet the gruesome fight scenes have weight and kinetic punch. Jackson's scoundrel is simultaneously laughable and chilling. This is a pastiche, mockery and homage to spy movies all wrapped in one well-tailored package.
