“GREED”: Asshattery

Steve Coogan

Published March 5, 2020, by Robert W. Butler at Butler’s Cinema Scene

“GREED” My rating: C+  (Opens March 6 at the Glenwood Arts, Barrywoods 24 and Town  Center 20)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Steve Coogan has portrayed so many supercilious asshats that many of us — including some of my fellow film critics — have come to the conclusion that he really is a supercilious asshat.

“Greed” is not going to change anybody’s mind.

In the latest from prolific writer/director Michael Winterbottom (“24 Hour Party People,” “Welcome to Sarajevo,” “Tristam Shandy” and “The Trip” franchise) Coogan plays a billionaire whose very existence sums up just about everything wrong with the “one percent.”

This is asshattery on a grand scale.

Sir Richard  McCreadie (Coogan) has made a fortune  in the fashion industry. Not that he knows anything about fashion — his talent is buying cheap and selling dear, and his financial history is an epic tale of acquiring brands (purchased with other people’s money), running them into the ground and selling off the corpses at a profit, leaving others holding the bag.

McCreadie is smug and entitled and vicious. He’s been hailed as “The Mozart of retail” and “The DaVinci of deal making,” but most people simply refer to him as “McGreedie.”

(Trump haters will want to identify McCreadie with our current President; well, both men employ the same dubious business model, but in truth Coogan’s character is vastly more witty and charismatic.)

Winterbottom’s screenplay has pretty obviously been inspired by Orson Welles’ great “Citizen Kane.”  As preparations are underway for McCreadie’s big blowout 60th birthday celebration, a hack journalist (David Mitchell) hired to write the Great Man’s authorized biography conducts a series of interviews with McCreadie’s battle-axe mother (Shirley Henderson in old-age makeup), his ex wife (Isla Fisher) and a slew of McCreadie lovers and haters.

These moments are interspersed with flashbacks from McCreadie’s young adulthood (he’s played as a scheming young man by Jamie Blackley).

Through the journalist’s eyes we see how McCreadie has built an empire on Indian sweatshops (among his support staff is a young woman,  played by Dinita Gohill, whose mother was a seamstress in one of those hellish operations) and left a trail of financial ruin.

Periodically we drop in on a government panel investigating financial malfeasance: McCreadie proudly testifies that his acts may have been immoral but never illegal.

And we frequently return to the massive effort to mount his celebrity-driven birthday party on a Greek island where a mini-Colosseum is being built from plywood and plaster so that celebrants can participate in a modern-day Roman orgy.

McCreadie is at first appalled to learn that his party will unfold next to a beach now populated by refugees from the Mideast.  No problem…he hires the boat people to portray the slaves who will serve his toga-clad guests.

“Greed” has been conceived as an indictment or the super wealthy…and while I can identify with Winterbottom on that count I cannot say that the film is much fun.  In its preachy tone it’s almost as off-puttingly smug as McCreadie himself.

And while it has some amusing moments — for instance, McCreadie snarkily interviewing lookalikes to fill in for the real-life celebrities who won’t be coming to his fete — the film lacks an emotional backbone. For all his malfeasance and arrogance, McCreadie remains the most entertaining character on screen.

What are you gonna do?  Evil is a lot more interesting than virtue.

| Robert W. Butler