Starting May 8, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Himesh Patel will be playing a formal crime comedy in cinemas, and its title «Greedy People». We are ready to tell you how crazy they are, and whether this craziness is of any use to the viewer, in the review below.
Genre crime comedy, thriller
Director Potsy Ponciroli
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Himesh Patel, Uzo Aduba, Lily James, Tracy Lorde, Joey Lauren Adams, Tim Blake Nelson, Simon Rex, Jim Gaffigan, Nina Arianda, Jose Maria Yazpik, Yingling Zhu
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb
A young police officer, Will Shelley, moves to the small town of Providence with his pregnant wife, Paige. On his first shift, he meets his partner Terry Brogan, who gives the newcomer a short tour of the city and tells him that he shouldn’t pretend to be Rambo in these peaceful surroundings. There’s no need for that, and there’s plenty of paperwork to go around. After his briefing, Terry goes to visit his Chinese mistress, while Will answers a call, but misinterprets the police code and thinks it’s a burglary.
Arriving at the scene, the bewildered cop gets into a conflict with the homeowner, which results in the woman’s accidental death. Later, Terry gets involved, and when the two men find a million dollars in cash not very well hidden in the house, they decide to stage a robbery and divide the money equally. However, it’s only a matter of time before their seemingly foolproof plan cracks and leads to unpredictable consequences.
It’s easy to guess where «Greedy People» gets its legs from — it’s a kind of Coen brothers in minimalist clothes, but director Potsie Ponchiroli and screenwriter Mike Vukadinovich are still far from the bright Coen style.
The story begins in the genre of crime comedy, with a textbook situation in the form of a corpse in the hands of the main characters and a million dollars to boot. Even if this is a secondary plot, especially within the genre, it is at least able to intrigue because some of the mise-en-scene literally hint at the future antagonism. Plus, the appropriate humor successfully defuses the situation and is pleasantly entertaining.
Structurally, the narrative is divided into chapters, each of which is told from the perspective of a particular character. In addition to the pair of protagonists, there are characters of varying degrees of importance and stupidity: Will’s distrustful pregnant wife Paige, the husband of the murdered woman and owner of the Tim Blake Nelson shrimp business named Wallace Chetlo, his secretary Deborah, the idiot masseur Keith Crawford, hitmen with the prominent nicknames Irish and Colombian. The boss of the hapless cops Murphy. The latter is the only positive character among a cohort of dubious dealers and outright scoundrels.
The local mix works well for a while, and if the story itself is hardly surprising, the cast (which is the component that plays a crucial role in this kind of movie) and the comedic approach do their job. However, in the second half, the filmmakers radically change the initial direction, and the film rapidly leaves the territory of a crime comedy and moves into the mainstream of a dramatic thriller. For example, light-hearted daytime scenes with the clumsy inhabitants of a sleepy town give way to a truly bloody showdown in the middle of the night, amidst a relentless downpour and a gloomy soundtrack. And instead of half-joking quotes from «Pulp Fiction» The guns will start talking.
It is here, despite the fact that the story is gaining momentum, that the intonational dissonance is felt, because a sharp change in mood does not do any good, and you are simply not ready for it.
The transformation into a serious movie is supported by a simple moral about the price of greed, which affects everyone who claims untold wealth. In this context, the Ukrainian localization, which is more of a comedy, cannot be called successful — the original «Greedy People» is much better suited to what is happening on the screen. At the same time, the movie lacks compactness — the authors fail to keep within the standard hour and a half, which makes it feel somewhat long.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a good performance and seems to be the most interesting character among all those present. Recently, the actor has rarely pleased his fans with bright roles (in last year’s «Beverly Hills cop» He was more of a backup singer for the show’s star, Eddie Murphy), but he can definitely add this part to his assets.
Himesh Patel, on the other hand, is frankly lost against the backdrop of his colleague’s energetic performance, and the moment with his character’s sore eye looks superfluous. Lily James reunites with Patel on the set after the musical rom-com «Yesterday», but she is not memorable. It was also nice to see Simon Rex — the star of parody comedies of the 2000s «Scary Movie» (parts 3 and 4) and «Superhero Movie».
As a result, Cohen’s followers turned out to be quite good in some places, but straightforward, strongly dissonant in mood, and a bit too long. So A Million in a Laundry Basket is as falsely advantageous for the characters as it is deceptively pretending to be a lighthearted comedy at the beginning for the viewer.