Greedy People

       When any group of friends gets together, conversations can vary, but hypothetical scenarios always come up. For example, “If I won the lottery,” or “If I found a bag of money,” we talk about all the things we would buy and how great it would be. What is very seldom talked about are the bad things that come with either of those scenarios, but with Greedy People, that aspect is covered, sometimes with blood. I, for one, will never win the lottery, as I don’t play, but after watching this movie, I would probably just walk past that bag of money as well.

Will (Himesh Patel) has started a new job as a police officer for a small island community, as he and his expecting wife (Lily James) have decided this is the spot to start their family. On the first day, Will is paired with Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who has been with the force for sixteen years and is quite the character. His first hours on the force are spent finding out where the free coffee is, but at lunchtime, things get a little sticky. It seems Terry likes to visit a married woman and uses Will as a lookout. It works fine until they get a call to check something out. Will tries to get Terry, but he is a little busy, so Will decides to go to the call by himself. That proves to be a bad decision, as things go wrong, and by the time Terry gets there, things are too broken to be fixed. As if what happened wasn’t already life-changing, Terry finds a million dollars in cash in a basket, which Will and Terry decide to split. Of course, that leads to the inevitable unraveling, as this once peaceful town suddenly develops a dead body problem.

Written by Mike Vukadinovich, Greedy People never really settles on what it wants to be, as it alternates between cartoonish humor and the darker side of human nature. The first half leans heavily on dark comedy, and I think that’s the lane it should have stayed in, as it excels at goofy comedy but fails to stick the landing with its third-act choices. Even with those flaws, Greedy People feels like the perfect end-of-summer movie, as it is consistently funny and has enough twists to be entertaining.

Greedy People is a well-crafted story about how greed can possess people, even in the most peaceful of places. I didn’t know what to expect, as the cast was the main appeal for me. They certainly don’t let you down, as Gordon-Levitt reminds us just how talented he is. When you add the always-great Tim Blake Nelson, Lily James, and Uzo Aduba as the police captain, you get a lot of “Coen Brothers” vibes in this movie. If only it could have closed the deal, then we would be talking about the gem of the summer. Instead, it gets greedy, wanting to be more than it should, but even so, it still delivers a pretty damn entertaining movie that is well worth the watch.