It’s easy to forget a time, not so long ago, when Joseph Gordon-Levitt seemed like one of the brightest rising stars in Hollywood. A slew of acclaimed supporting roles in Christopher Nolan movies ranging from the “Dark Knight” trilogy to “Inception” made it seem like the former child star was destined to dominate the next few decades of moviemaking with a halo that rivaled Nolan’s. But it never quite materialized that way, as Gordon-Levitt spent the late 2010s and early 2020s lying low and popping up in forgettable cameos that seemed more interested in cashing in on his celebrity status than expanding it.
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It’s forgivable to have wondered, in recent years, whether his talent was overstated in the first place —but a quick viewing of Potsy Ponciroli’s “Greedy People” should quickly rectify that. Gordon-Levitt’s electrifying buffoonery is an easy highlight of the ensemble crime comedy. He steals the show as crass and dim-witted cop Terry, whose corruption can’t overcome his utter lack of ambition. He floats between off-color jokes, maniacal outbursts, and Mandarin Chinese monologues with ease, providing an aura of misdirected male confidence that allows the idiot plot to flourish.
And what an idiot plot it is. When rookie cop Will (Himesh Patel) moves to the small East Coast town of Providence, he’s just looking for a quiet place to earn a living and support his pregnant wife (Lily James). His first day on the job offers a series of encouraging signs, as his new partner Terry ensures him that the sleepy island hamlet offers minimal danger in return for accepting the lack of excitement. Their first ride along offers little more than scenic views, free coffees, and instructional CDs that teach Mandarin — until Terry decides to make a brief stop to fornicate with his latest mistress.
During his partner’s extensive sex break, Will receives a dispatch that he mistakenly believes to be a burglary call. His confusion with the department’s numerical system masks the fact that it’s actually a report of indecent exposure — which, tragically, doesn’t stop him from barging into the home of the wealthiest woman in town and inadvertently killing her.
When Terry arrives at the scene, he’s all too ready to throw his new partner under the bus — until he stumbles upon the $1 million in cash that was conveniently hidden at the scene. The two circumstantial partners decide to stage a fake murder in order to split the money, which quickly attracts the ire of the wealthy seafood mogul who thought he was leaving the money as payment for a Columbian hitman he hired to kill his wife — along with his Evangelical Christian mistress, his wife’s masseur, and the two competing assassins who have formed a reluctant detente to split Providence’s murder business.
Look under the hood of “Greedy People” with a critical eye and a nonzero amount of technical mistakes emerge. The film never quite settles on a coherent set of rules for its world, alternating between cartoonish logic that expects us to believe two assassins named The Columbian and The Irishman are able to comfortably coexist while sharing adjacent mailboxes and realism that dares us to consider the viciousness that humans are capable of when their own material gain is involved.
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Mike Vukadinovich’s script should have leaned into the former approach, as it excels at goofy crime comedy but fails to stick the landing on either its blood-soaked ending or the ham-fisted philosophizing about human morality that serves as an epilogue. Its title cards also annoyingly list their favorite quotes from the upcoming scene — a gesture that does little more than spoil the punchlines of what could have been solid jokes. And it wears its aesthetic debt to the Coen brothers so blatantly that it almost appears to have emerged fully formed from a “We Have ‘Fargo’ at Home” meme.
But those flaws feel frustratingly inconsequential when watching a film that otherwise checks every prerequisite box for Dog Days of Summer entertainment. “Greedy People” is consistently funny, endearingly acted, competently directed, sufficiently twisty, and more than entertaining enough to pass an afternoon when it’s too hot to go outside but too early to distract one’s self with copious amounts of football. It’s a film that gives Gordon-Levitt an excuse to remind us why he could have been a generational movie star and Simon Rex an opportunity to prove that roles need not be as hefty as “Red Rocket” to showcase his uncanny knack for paranoid sleazy charm.
It’s hard to recommend “Greedy People” as high art — or even as the kind of Coens-esque cult classic that it seems to want to be — but it’s even harder to suggest that anyone craving some fun late summer entertainment skip it. If you’re looking for an excuse to head to the multiplex this weekend, you could do a lot worse than watching Gordon-Levitt emphatically telling his new employee to honk twice if he sees a middle-aged Asian businessman who could interrupt the fuck-fest he has planned for his new lover.
Grade: B
A Lionsgate release, “Greedy People” opens in theaters on Friday, August 23.
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