It’s easy to forget a time, not so long ago, when Joseph Gordon-Levitt seemed like one of Hollywood’s brightest rising stars. A string of acclaimed supporting roles in Christopher Nolan films, from the “Dark Knight” trilogy to “Inception,” made it seem like the former child star was destined to dominate the next few decades of filmmaking with an aura that rivaled Nolan’s. But it never quite materialized that way, as Gordon-Levitt spent the late 2010s and early 2020s keeping a low profile and appearing in forgettable cameos that seemed more interested in cashing in on his celebrity status than expanding on it.
You’re forgivable to have wondered, in recent years, whether his talent was overblown in the first place, but a quick look at Potsy Ponciroli’s “Greedy People” should quickly rectify that. Gordon-Levitt’s electrifying buffoonery is an easy high point of the ensemble cop comedy.
Director: Potsy PonciroliWriter: Mike VukadinovichStars: Himesh Patel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lily James
He steals the show as the boorish, dimwitted cop Terry, whose corruption can’t overcome his utter lack of ambition. He floats between off-color jokes, manic outbursts, and Mandarin monologues with ease, providing an aura of misdirected masculine confidence that allows the idiotic plot to flourish.
And what an idiotic plot it is. When rookie cop Will (Himesh Patel) moves to the small East Coast town of Providence, he’s just looking for a quiet place to make a living and support his pregnant wife (Lily James). His first day on the job offers a number of encouraging signs, as his new partner Terry assures him that the quiet island village offers minimal danger in exchange for accepting the lack of excitement. His first trip offers little more than scenic views, free coffees, and instructional CDs that teach Mandarin — until Terry decides to make a brief stop to fornicate with his latest lover.
During his partner's extended sex break, Will receives a message that he mistakenly believes to be a burglary call. His confusion with the department's number system masks the fact that it's actually an indecent exposure report, which, tragically, doesn't stop him from breaking into the home of the richest woman in town and inadvertently killing her.
When Terry arrives on the scene, he's more than willing to blow his new partner off the hook—until he stumbles upon the million dollars in cash that was conveniently hidden at the scene. The two circumstantial partners decide to stage a fake murder to split the money, which quickly draws the ire of the wealthy seafood magnate, who thought he was leaving the money as payment for a Colombian hitman he hired to kill his wife, along with his evangelical Christian mistress, his wife's masseur, and the two rival assassins who have formed a reluctant détente to split up the Providence murder business. If you look under the hood of “Greedy People” with a critical eye, a non-zero amount of technical errors appear. The film never quite establishes a coherent set of rules for its world, and alternates between a cartoonish logic that expects us to believe that two killers named The Columbian and The Irishman are able to comfortably coexist while sharing adjacent mailboxes and a realism that challenges us to consider the cruelty that humans are capable of when their own material gain is at stake.
Mike Vukadinovich’s script should have leaned toward the former approach, as it excels at silly crime comedy but fails to hit the mark in either its blood-soaked finale or the clumsy philosophy on human morality that serves as its epilogue. The film titles also annoyingly list their favorite quotes from the following scene, a gesture that only spoils the ending of what could have been solid jokes. And it wears its aesthetic debt to the Coen brothers so unabashedly that it almost seems to have sprung fully formed from a “We have ‘Fargo’ at home” meme.
But those flaws feel frustratingly inconsequential when watching a movie that otherwise ticks all the prerequisites for Dog Days of Summer-style entertainment. “Greedy People” is consistently funny, with endearing performances, competent direction, just twisted enough and more than entertaining enough to while away an afternoon when it’s too hot to go outside but too early to be distracted by copious amounts of football. It’s a movie that gives Gordon-Levitt an excuse to remind us why he could have been a generational movie star and Simon Rex a chance to prove that roles don’t need to be as heavy-handed as “Red Rocket” to showcase his uncanny ability to lead.
Comments
Post a Comment