By After spending the past few projects together with Rob Brydon indulging in some of Europe’s finest restaurants, Steve Coogan and Michael Winterbottom dive into some satirical waters off the coast of Greece for their latest escapade with Greed, a rather unsubtle portrait of the mega-wealthy and the various conniving ways that they cheat the system for their own gain.
The film depicts the days leading up to the 60th birthday party of billionaire high-street fashion mogul Richard ‘Greedy’ McCreadie. Desperate to repair his reputation following bad press as a result of a few of his chains going bust and people losing their jobs, with McCreadie’s bank balance barely taking a hit, he’s planning on making this party one to remember. Following mostly from the perspective of McCreadie’s biographer, Nick (David Mitchell), Greed pieces together how this self-made billionaire came to be, with Nick talking to both those that know him and best, and those affected by his callous actions.
While Coogan and Winbterbottom have stated that McCreadie is predominantly inspired by Phillip Green (chairman of the Arcadia Group), he is pretty interchangeable for any multi-billionaire with a larger than life personality, and their fair share of controversies. This is not a film that is at all interested in playing its satire with much in the way of subtlety. The message won’t be lost on you as it goes into exposing the ways in which the mega rich use their position to cut corners and gain more wealth for themselves, while the people doing a lot of the actual work end up with poor pay or losing their job entirely. In McCreadie’s case, much of this comes from exploitation of workers in Sri Lankan factories.
Full review at VultureHound, originally published June 22nd 2020.
Andrew Gaudion 