The crime-comedy-thriller has become a staple genre over the years, with each film refining the delicate balancing act of each individual element. Greedy People seeks to add to the oeuvre, and while the scales swing somewhat unevenly, Potsy Ponciroli's dark comedy takes gleeful delight in its many twists and turns as it descends into chaos. Thankfully, its tight ensemble of heavy-hitters ground the film to make it a fascinating, tense, and wickedly funny time.
Himesh Patel stars as Will Shelley, a quiet, newly qualified police officer who decides to upend his life from the mainland to the small island of Providence with his heavily pregnant wife Paige (Lily James) in tow. New to town, he is partnered with long-serving local officer, and complete wild card, Terry Brogan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Immediately, Shelley's hopes for a peaceful life on the island are slashed, when a monumental first day ends with a dead body, a million dollars in cash, and a partner ready to obscure the evidence to secure the money. After all, this is a film about greedy people.
What follows is a journey that takes us through the lives of all the key players in this case and on the island, each functioning much like the caricatured suspects in a classic murder mystery. They even get their own segments of the film, complete with chapter title cards. However, as we meet each new person and witness their perspective of the day, we uncover more of the corrupt, messy, complicated entanglement that led to this point. What starts as a comedy, albeit bloody one, of errors, quickly transitions into a tense crime thriller as people's paranoia and greed drives them to extremities with severe consequences for all involved.
When the film sits firmly in the comedy camp, it excels — the humour is dry, but laugh-out-loud funny, with the nuances of local island life and the characters who inhabit it setting up for a quirky take on the police procedural in the vein of Fargo (1996). When the film wants you to be laughing, the moments of darkness strike through with jarring clarity; the tension is established early on. But once the film has thrown repeated twists at you and eventually settles into an acceptance of being a full-out crime thriller, it loses its steady sense of tone. The moments of humour are now the thing that cut through, but with less success than the aforementioned moments of darkness in the front half.
Where it struggles on the genre front, Greedy People is redeemed by the sheer enormity of its central ensemble. In the lead role, Patel displays a captivating screen presence which is understated in its tone, yet retains its authentic emotion. Opposite him, Gordon-Levitt clearly revels in getting to play such a morally ambiguous role, and leans into the ridiculousness of the larger-than-life Terry. Having been Hollywood's nice guy next door, there is something incredibly alluring about the darkness that underpins everything he does here: a quality that means you are never able to let your guard down.
Beyond the pair, the further supporting cast each perfect the tropes that their character embodies. Regardless of how each function separately, it is how this ensemble works together as moving parts that make this film such a joy. The characters are interwoven by their performances and by Vukadinovich's script in a way that would not feel out of place on the stage of a small theatre in a town much like the one presented in the film.
Greedy People is a film that will provide a fun time, in its own violent way. It would have served even better by being seen with a crowd, with the unhinged journey surely providing large reactions. Greedy People feels small, and yet, it provides some truly big, memorable performances.
Greedy People is available to watch via Video On Demand from 23 September.
