Steve Coogan
“GREED” My rating: C+
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).
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