Steve Coogan and Michael Winterbottom are no strangers to scenic views and fancy canapés — on their long-running show The Trip the comedian and director, along with Rob Brydon, have mooched from one sun-drenched luxury location to the next, including, in this year’s fourth series, Greece. But while the central location in Greed — a beachside hotel on the Greek island of Mykonos — may inspire thoughts of Coogan impersonating Roger Moore while nibbling on lamb chops, the prevailing mood here is not whimsy, but anger. The film is designed as an assault on the carelessness, cruelty and — yes — greed of the mega-rich. It is, though, only partly successful in that aim, too tangled with subplots and didactic in its tone to really land a devastating punch. Succession, it is not.
Greed makes its satirical points with a light hand.
It’s a shame, because unsubtly named high-street fashion magnate Sir Richard McCreadie, aka ‘Rich’, aka ‘Greedy’, is a solid new Coogan creation, with blinding-white gnashers, an irritating haircut that probably cost McCreadie £500, and a nice line in colourful put-downs; at one point, surveying one of his stores that’s been given a coat of pink paint, he complains about feeling “trapped in a vagina full of discount clothes”. He’s just believable enough to be credible as a real-world billionaire (the character was largely based on Topshop’s Sir Philip Green, who has faced a flurry of complaints from employees about his conduct), and just ludicrous enough to be consistently entertaining.
McCreadie’s favourite film is, rather wonderfully, Gladiator, and so his 60th birthday bash, around which the story revolves, is a charmless affair based on the Russell Crowe epic, complete with fake Colosseum, enforced togas and sedated lion (the beast is largely, and sometimes noticeably, computer-generated). The action which unfolds on Mykonos in the run-up to the party is the film’s strongest element, boasting some decent cameos and an excellent George Michael joke, as well as small but well-developed performances from Isla Fisher (as McCreadie’s candid first wife) and Asa Butterfield (as his decidedly peculiar son). Under the Greek sun, Greed makes its satirical points with a light hand, even if the party’s denouement does pack a serious punch.
Unfortunately, though, there’s quite a bit of heavy-handedness too, as Winterbottom regularly cuts away from the party-planning with flashbacks that delve into McCreadie’s unscrupulous early life, as well as scenes with a tagalong biographer, played by David Mitchell, who never feels like more than a device to extract exposition. The film begins with a quote from E.M. Forster, and concludes with a lengthy series of title cards providing facts and figures on such varied issues as immigration, the global wealth gap and gender inequality. The breadth and intensity of the film’s ambition is clear, but it’s hard not to feel that a more focused approach would have resulted in a superior story.
