Greedy People

From time to time we get to watch a good comedy you know the comedy that matters not the stupid comedy and this one is a good comedy.

Since I saw the trailer I was laughing at the parts where you say that is a good joke a good scene and it did not disappoint at all.

The whole movie is kind of a comic mess just from one wrong decision but it pays at the end and you feel good watching it and even talking about it to your friends.

The cast did well everyone played his parts and played his/her role perfectly. I would recommend it to everyone who is longing for a good comedy not stupid circus comedy but real comedy.

5 stars is typically the minimum IMDB rating for a movie I will consider watching. I was going to give this 5 stars when it was 95% over, but the ending was good so I bumped it up to a 6. I'm surprised Gordon-Levitt agreed to be in this film. It had a low budget, 'B' movie type of feel, something that would go straight to streaming only, or a TV movie. Not bad, but not the quality I typically associate with him. It just felt cheap. I'm not sure if it was the acting, flimsy dialog, the screenplay or the somewhat predictable series of events. But movie just seemed a bit goofy. It was decent, held my attention, but seemed like it was missing something. I do appreciate that it was light hearted and had a pretty good ending. The ending was probably the most realistic part of the whole film. It's rare in Hollywood to have an ending where everyone got what they deserved, albeit an extreme version of justice.

Greedy People is a black comedy clearly inspired by the Coen brothers as its colourful cast of characters squabble over a bag of money without communicating to one another, leading to disastrous results. It's obviously not as well done as its inspirations, especially since the shift from quirky comedy to thriller isn't smooth but it remains twisty fun. The humour is mostly front-loaded and the biggest shocks come towards the end.

It starts off as a two-hander between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Himesh Patel, who have a suitably awkward rapport and Gordon-Levitt's washed up cop who spends his days learning mandarin and playing his own music is definitely the highlight of the whole film. Lily James takes control for a chapter, grappling with what she's doing effectively and Uzo Aduba is the unwavering moral centre in the vein of Marge Gunderson.

Potsy Ponciroli's direction waits until over 20 minutes in to drop the title which works beautifully and the most serious moments taking place in torrential rainfall makes those scenes look so good. The chaptered structure also works with it having a fairly big cast who all do their own things and the film has a real talent for executing those characters. Jordan Lehning's score has a fittingly quirky nature as well which disappears in the second half.

There is enough going on here to keep you involved. A bunch of people chasing a bag of money and mayhem ensues. The only problem is they never dive deeply into any one character including the mains. Its hard to feel something for people you don't know.

At one point, I was cheering on the hit-men because they were way more interesting than the normies. None of the actors really had a chance to shine because the scenes were a bit chaotic and there was little substantive dialogue. The actress playing the secretary was good. I remember her from Billions and other films.

5 stars - you won't be bored but barely worth the time to type this up.

Do yourself a big favor and skip the trailer. This is a fairly dark movie but I suspect the marketing department didn't quite know how to present it. So they put the lighter/funnier moments in the trailer and turned it loose, hoping for the best.

The movie itself was quite intriguing. A wide assortment of characters, of varying moral character, end up on a slippery downward slope of their own doing.

Excellent cinematography with good acting all around. Tim Blake Nelson? What can I say? I'd watch him read the phone book and he was superb as a slimeball.

Definitely worth watching, just be aware the trailer painted something a bit lighter.