Somewhere during the runtime of Greedy People, a Coen Brothers-esque film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Himesh Patel, Lily James, and others, I started wondering if this is a murder mystery, a black comedy, or a morality tale that warns against one of the seven deadly sins. Maybe it’s all of the above. But the film’s genre will matter less and less as the humorously titled chapters roll by. Directed by Potsy Ponciroli, the film is set in the sleepy town of Providence, somewhere on the East Coast, and revolves around the misadventures of two cops. Patel’s Will, a new police officer who moves to town with his pregnant wife and dog, teams up with old local cop, Gordon-Levitt’s Terry. The former soon discovers that the latter has little respect for the rules. He’d rather go around town getting free coffee from serious cafe owners and have an affair with a married Asian woman he learned Mandarin for than solve crime. He’s as dirty and corrupt as they come.
The main story of Greedy People can only be described as crazy. One afternoon, a police call comes in while Terry is on an afternoon outing while Will waits in the car. The newcomer tries to get his partner’s attention, but he doesn’t succeed, but he drives away himself. He enters the house where the resident, Traci Lords’ Virginia, is shocked to see him in her kitchen. In a freak accident, Will fires his gun. Before you know it, she falls on a piece of furniture that goes right through the back of her skull. By the time Terry shows up, there is a corpse at the crime scene in a pool of blood and a bag full of money in the room. Of course, the two decide to split the money and make it look like someone else killed her. Does the plan work? Who left the money in a bag? Over the course of 1 hour and 52 minutes, the film unravels a series of hilarious accidents in Providence. A story like this, broken up into chapters with titles that almost give away the next plot twist, shouldn’t really work. Then there are the city’s rival hitmen, who have placed mailboxes on either side of a street. Most residents are aware of their existence, yet they have a fully operational business. Again, it shouldn’t work, but it does.
Seeing Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this film reminds you that he has always been a big-money star. Between his memorable performances in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises and Inception and the romantic dramas 10 Things I Hate About You and (500) Days of Summer, his celebrity was eclipsed. There is the occasional highlight such as The Trial of the Chicago 7. The actor always finds a way to surprise the audience. In Greedy People he thrives as the idiotic but ambitious Terry. He seems to really enjoy playing the dumbass and it shows. The actor’s performance is delightful and it’s easily one of the biggest highlights of the comedy antics. It can be said that the nonsense plot gets away with a lot of loopholes because of the amount of money he spends on the piece. Yesterday’s star, Himesh Patel, endures and his nervous, frantic approach to playing Will provides the perfect surrogate for the audience watching the most bizarre events unfold. Lily James, who starred opposite Patel in Yesterday, also serves as the meddling woman. Her character has a surprising arc that you won’t see coming. Together the ensemble has some beautiful moments.
If Greedy People tries to make a moral story about the pitfalls of greed, the film is not good at multitasking. While it’s great as a hilarious, screw-ball comedy with ever-increasing stakes, it spends quite a bit of time trying to work on a philosophical level. You can appreciate the ambition, but the film bites off more than it can chew, almost as greedy as the characters that populate the world. While this isn’t the best movie to come out of the month that saw the rather dull Glicked (Gladiator and Wicked) box office clash, it can’t be skipped entirely. Watch it if you need a reminder of how good Joseph Gordon-Levitt is, or to see how far you can take a crazy idea and run with it.
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