In “Old Henry,” director Potsy Ponciroli spilled an inordinate amount of blood on and around the porch of a frontier homestead. “And for what? For a little bit of money,” as Fargo police chief Marge Gunderson put it after solving a no-less-senseless crime a century later. Reuniting with Coen brothers collaborator Tim Blake Nelson for his second feature, “Greedy People,” Ponciroli trades the lawless West for the well-policed present-day Northeast, setting a darkly comic cash grab in the Rhode Island town of Providence.
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This time around, Ponciroli is directing someone else’s script, and even though the new film feels even more Coen-esque than his first, it lacks the blunt, remorseless quality that set “Old Henry” apart. That film tipped its hat to its influences; this one seems to be borrowing the whole damn uniform. Just look at the way it begins and ends with a deceptively effective female police chief (Uzo Aduba), who also happens to be the only character with her priorities in the right place. All that’s missing is the woodchipper.
So here’s the deal: It’s law enforcement rookie Will’s (Himesh Patel) first day on the job, and he’s been paired with Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an unruly local cop with plenty of bad habits and an even worse mustache. Terry’s a real piece of work, all but hazing Will as he blasts heavy metal music and obliges the newbie to wait outside while he stops for a quickie with an immigrant housewife. You half-expect him to make racist jokes, but instead, Terry reveals that he’s learning Chinese in his spare time.
Not much happens in Providence, this far-from-model officer insists, advising the new guy to find a hobby. But that’s hardly true of Will’s first few hours on the job: A call comes in while Terry is preoccupied. Misunderstanding the radio code, he lets himself into the mansion of local seafood magnate Wallace (Nelson) and disturbs his wife Virginia (Traci Lords), with unfortunate (unexpectedly fatal) consequences. It’s not all terrible, however, as the panicked cops discover a bag of cash in the living room and decide to scrub the scene and make the woman’s accidental death look like a crime.
Hardly any of the behavior screenwriter Mike Vukadinovich describes up till this point in the film resembles anything audiences might recognize from the real world, and while this Jerry Springer-worthy plot lacks the perverse appeal of true crime, Ponciroli has a colorful enough imagination to keep us intrigued. The closest thing to relatable might be Will’s home-life introduction, in which we also meet his bright, pregnant wife Paige (Lily James), who specializes in cleaning up her husband’s messes.
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Their family could definitely use the money, although nothing comes easy in films like this. The only mystery: Will some lucky soul get to keep the cash, or will it wind up blowing away to the four winds, à la “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”? The answer to that question typically reflects some moral judgment on the filmmakers’ part, and judging by “Old Henry,” in Ponciroli’s hands, nobody is safe, not even Nelson (who has a much smaller role here).
As “Greedy People” unfolds, the nonlinear screenplay keeps flashing back to reveal new and even more unseemly characters, like the masseur (Simon Rex) who happened to be upstairs when Virginia was killed, or a pair of hit men, identified as “The Irishman” (Jim Gaffigan) and “The Colombian” (José María Yazpik) who are somehow mixed up in things. Why a town as small as Providence needs two hired guns is anybody’s guess, though their involvement all but guarantees the body count is going to climb.
What follows isn’t so much predictable as inevitable, and it feels like a missed opportunity on Ponciroli’s part not to have focused more on what sets this project apart: not the greedy people, but the place where it all happens. I can’t remember the last film set in Rhode Island (the Farrelly brothers are from there, so “Me, Myself & Irene,” maybe?). The plot could have been recycled from a dozen ’90s movies — overcomplicated crime thrillers made in the Tarantino mold — while quirky casting choices, like putting Lords and Rex in the same film, are wasted by not putting them in the same scene.
Terry is a scruffy, against-type role for Gordon-Levitt, which amounts to watching a boy scout play a bad cop. The movie would be more effective if we saw him as menacing (his partner certainly does), although the point of “Greedy People” seems to be that even nice folks turn bad when you dangle enough money in front of them. It’s a shame they don’t see the world the way Marge Gunderson does: “There’s more to life than a little money, you know.”
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