User Reviews

Winterbottom's stuff is always interesting but unfortunately this one fell at some obvious hurdles. For two thirds it was an effective satire with some good performances (Coogan, as ever, a hoot) and some funny lines but in the final furlong any semblance of subtlety was dropped for silly plot developments and cheap sentiment, bashing the audience over the head with a point that had already been well made. A shame.

It's a pity that this ends with a slide-show of factoids apparently intended to give the issues raised by the film a 'men vs women' or 'third world vs first' slant. Actually, what the all-too-true-to-life story is about is money vs no money: the fact that most of it is scooped up by a few arrogant, entitled, savvy people, and the rest of us - men as much as women, west as much as east - are at their mercy. Haven't we just recently seen the way our former public water utilities have been given the Philip Green treatment by unscrupulous capitalists, 'leveraged' for billions while our rivers are choked with sewage? And similarly, there's a moment of moral clarity about how the amoral 'Green' fails to recognise the moral freight of what he does - 'in his mind, all he does is offer a price' - but the same does not extend to some 'good guy' characters whose actions are simply indefensible.

There's a pinch of amusement here, and a peck of anger, but none of it will have any effect on the Philip Greens of this world. They are too stupid and arrogant to be hurt by satire and, whatever devastation they wreak on others, they somehow always come out on top. Realising that, you can only come away depressed.

Yes Steve Coogan is in this film but people need to just stop assuming it's going to be a comedy. Read all the negative reviews and they all complain about this not being a comedy.

It's not supposed to be a comedy. It's a mockumentary holding a mirror up to society allowing the rich to dodge tax and hire almost slave labour to sustain their empires, with people happily buying slave made products.

I went into this film without knowing anything about it and was pleasantly surprised.

So ignore the people moaning that this isn't a comedy and just watch it for what it actually it.

Greed is a fine film and nothing more. It is very inconsistent in quality but it is a seriously enjoyable biopic on Sir Richard McCreadie

This is one of those films which wouldn't have been as strong without its lead actor Steve Coogan. He honestly stole the show.

I feel like the film feels half baked, so it is quite noticable uneven at times in tone. The political aspect doesn't always go well the stylish comedic aspects. Although the latter works more well than the former.

I don't have anything wrong with the whole message these kind of films put out but they did it in such a dull way. The scenes preparing for the party and at the party are a lot more well done.

Overall it is pretty average and feels like this was wasted potential in in this. It's damn entertaining and a lot of fun at times but needs more substance in the political side of the film. It just feels tacky and the subplot with they refugees doesn't exactly work 100%

Some great performances, always great for me to watch Steve Coogan. he plays this so well. Isla Fischer is also worth a mention.

This is entertaining, funny but poignat in places. Thought provoking with a message throughout. Capitalism and the wealth divide.

Well worth a watch.

What kind of film is this supposed to be? A comedy? A polemic? A social satire? An expose? It seems to be trying to be all of these simultaneously - and the result is something of a mess.

Steve Coogan is good as a loathsome tycoon who doesn't care who he tramples underfoot as he amasses his fortune. David Mitchell is also good as his bumbling would-be biographer; and the preparations for Coogan's hedonistic birthday bash contain some fine comedy.

But the film also wants to condemn the way the fashion industry is built on the exploitation of workers in Sri Lanka and elsewhere (and everyone who has ever bought clothes in their local High St is complicit in this exploitation). This is a theme worthy of treatment, but to attempt to splice it with the comedic strand of the film jars dreadfully.

The plight of refugees crossing the Mediterranean is also touched upon. Again, this is something we should all be concerned about, but it can hardly be blamed on retail fashion moguls - so why try to shoehorn it into this film?

And as if there wasn't too much in the film already, we also get the filming of some sort of reality TV programme, the relationship of which to the main plot is far from clear.

They say that less is more. In the case of this film, more is less.

Whilst the numbers and messages are truly horrifying, it does get the messages across in a pretty good way. I enjoyed it more than expected but I'm not sure it should really be billed as a comedy, it didnt exactly have me in stitches. Whilst the ending wasn't smooth and certainly not unexpected, it tied in nicely.

Steve Coogan gives a great performance as ever, but the rest of the film didn't quite hold it together.

The message Winterbottom was trying to engage the audience with became too preachy, particularly the end montage of statistics aimed at shaming the fashion industry and its use of sweatshop labour. This was wholly unnecessary as the story made this point without this tacked on piece of activism.

The CGI lion was also disappointing, as was the general direction of the story, and many of the characters felt under-developed and derivative.

It was all a bit too obvious, and very simplistic in its outlook.

We all know that the very wealthy and powerful mostly made that wealth through ruthlessness, this is an old, tired narrative now.

On the Greek island of Mykonos, British billionaire and fashion retail extraordinaire Sir Richard McCreadie (Coogan, in a role loosely inspired by Sir Philip Green) prepares to celebrate his 60th birthday. While preparations for a wild extravaganza commence, McCreadie is surveyed by Nick (David Mitchell), who has been tasked with writing his biography; a project that will hopefully salvage McCreadie's soiled reputation. Winterbottom's odd comedy is a satirical effort that examines the inequality present throughout the fashion industry. While it is evident that Greed is a film with a clear message to convey, it is somewhat frustrating to see it handled in such a clumsy manner. Greed tackles a myriad of themes, including wealth inequality, the refuge crisis and the superficial nature of reality television. Scattered throughout Winterbottom's screenplay are a wide range of characters, but very few of them actually feel fully realized. Coogan's McCreadie (an all-round unlikable man) doesn't even feel like a leading character in his own film, though Coogan makes do with the material he's given. David Mitchell is a welcome presence, for sure, and his portrayal of Nick, a mild-mannered, good man observing an otherwise seedy world within which he doesn't belong, results in one of the only likable characters in the film. Much of the comedy falls flat (save for a few chuckle-worthy one liners here and there), and the climactic scene takes a bizarrely brutal turn that feels tonally out of place with the rest of the picture. Greed certainly has good intentions, but the screenplay could have done with a few extra revisions to ensure a more cohesive structure. Mitchell is the standout here, but everything else is largely forgettable.

So after seeing the negative reviews for, and then watching 'The Corrupted' and 'Love Wedding Repeat', I realised that the negatives are from Americans and not from Brits, Our humour is different (For one they spell it wrong!) So it's not surprising they didn't like this British movie, mainly because they don't get our jokes (Our any jokes actually!)

Watch it , enjoy it!!!

If you know Steve Coogan and David Mitchell, you'll like this movie!

If you can't? Then you're a word that sounds similar 🤣

Fun entertaining story about tax evasion labor exploitation and greed. theme played with satire and black humor highly recommended I was impressed by the good story

Greetings again from the darkness. "Greed for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works." Those words were part of the iconic speech from Gordon Gekko (an Oscar winning role for Michael Douglas) in Oliver Stone's 1987 film WALL STREET. Here we are 3 decades later, and there may not be a more tarnished word, attitude, or approach than 'greed', and filmmaker Michael Winterbottom re-teams with his "The Trip" collaborator Steve Coogan to deliver satire on today's ultra-rich.

The always entertaining Mr. Coogan stars as Sir Richard McReadie, also known in the media by numerous other names like: Greedy McReadie, McGreedy, The King of High Street, and The Monet of Money (a label he seemingly applied to himself). Sir Richard is apparently modeled after fashion mogul Sir Philip Green (owner of Top Shop), and with his fake tan and blinding white teeth caps, makes a pretty easy target for Winterbottom's bashing of the too-rich.

A loose structure to the film is provided by the contrast of the coordination and excess going into planning McReadie's upcoming 60th birthday toga bash on the Greek isle of Mykonos, and the official inquiry by Parliament into his questionable business practices. Scenes from the committee hearings are interspersed throughout the film, along with some flashbacks to young McReadie (played by Jamie Blackley) honing his negotiation skills. There is also McReadie's hired biographer Nick (played by David Mitchell), a spineless freelancer thrilled to have the job, despite his initial obliviousness to what McReadie is all about. Although Nick does uncover some of the cruel labor practices, the character seems to be a way for Winterbottom to poke at journalists simultaneously to his scalding the rich. Celebrities for hire also take shot to the bow.

Isla Fisher plays Samantha, McReadie's ex-wife, whose Monaco residence helps hide the family/ex-family fortune. The relationship between these two is not just creepy on the balance sheet, but plays out in ways apparently acceptable to the lifestyles of the wealthy. Asa Butterfield plays their overlooked and underappreciate son Finn, and the always fabulous Shirley Henderson plays Irish mother Margaret in such a way that we wish more of the movie was about her. McReadie's daughter Lily (Sophia Cookson) is pretty funny as she films her Reality TV show in the midst of her father's party preparation ... which includes Bulgarian workers building a replica of a Roman amphitheater to act as the site of a GLADIATOR reenactment - replete with a live lion (not a tiger)!

Sarah Solemani and Dinita Gohil play two of McReadie's key assistants, and provide us a glimpse of how real people struggle to work amidst such waste and ego and unrealistic expectations. McReadie kinda quotes Shakespeare, but we feel certain he's not a well-read man. Instead his talents are in bending a system and forcing others to acquiesce to his demands. The tabletop shell game he mastered as a parlor trick is really just a miniaturized version of his business empire ... trading one highly-leveraged enterprise for the next, while cashing in on the process.

Winterbottom's approach is often confusing and sometimes drifts towards mockumentary for flashbacks and interviews. It's an uneven comedy that works at times, and doesn't at others - not uncommon for satire. Coogan makes McReadie always fun (in a disturbing way) to watch, though the film never clicks better than the Keith Richards moment near the end. The anger-based acidic comedy satirizes what's happening in the real world, and tries to further expose how the mega-rich take advantage of the rest of us. Some well executed bits make this one worth watching, but really offers little in the form of insight or solutions. Instead it's just infuriating ... at least in the parts where we aren't laughing. We certainly don't laugh over the closing credits as real world statistics are provided regarding inequality and third world labor.

The overall message of the film about the fashion industry and its cheap overseas workforce is interesting. But as a comedy it didn't work for me.

If you like Coogan you're better off rewatching some of his other films or the series with Rob Brydon.

And waiting until this hits the TV / streaming services.

Best thing about the movie was steve coogan , other than that very underwhelming

This has to be Winter bottoms worst. Fans of his cannon are likely to be disappointed with Greed and it's very clumsy bash you over the head "message". It's a thinly veiled attacked on a well-known fashion chain owner in the UK as is a kind of a wish phantasy of what the director would probably like to do to him. The film is well shot but it's basically just 90 mins of the main character being unlikeable, with a few funny lines from Coogan. It was only the fact that Coogan was in this and I expected a certain level of humour from him that kept me watching. The trouble was this isn't the Coogan from The Trip or Partridge it's political Coogan who made himself look stupid during Brexit. This is obvious a political film but it's the politics of the out of touch rich elite. It's the kind of people who are very well off themselves but think that a shop chain owner is the devil. These are the same people who happily dismiss those who voted for Brexit as stupid (there's actually a Brexit joke in the movie) as being stupid. However the poor from another country are seen as exploited saints. And thats where this movie falls flat on its face. It's hypocritical. The ending is basically wish fulfillment for the loser left who voted Corbyn and Remain. This will only play well to the well off who despise the working class in the UK as much as they have those with more money than them. Anticapitalism at it's worst and it wasn't even funny. Apparently murder is ok as well as long as someone has more cash and is an unpleasant character.

Do you want to watch what is being marketed as a comedy and be bashed over the head as if you are an idiot by a very very wealthy filmmakers and writers telling you that next level of wealth, the very very very wealthy, are evil? With maybe two jokes in the 90 minute experience? Michael winterbotom has become so tedious, May as well watch an indictment of global warming by wealthy giant carbon footprint actors and filmmakers who jet to Cannes and spend the time on yachts. Want better comedy? You should read Michael winterbottoms ex-wife's novel about a filmmaker who travels the world, cheating on his wife, sleeping with lots of actresses who work for him. That is real funny in this metoo age. It puts this preachy fingerprinting nonsense film in perspective.

The world has been polluted badly now,cleanse needed.. We never think of the other side of people when comes to greed. In short, this movie tells u that rich ppl won't end up well. It's matter of time.. Karma bites. It's a good info sharing in this movie on the real world on labour end.

This film was completely average on all ways. By continually jumping around this jumble of story the entire premise is left lacking direction. From whole cast, only Steve Coogan gives a decent performance, but even that doesn't manage to succeed in enlivening the film. At a running time of 104 minutes - which feels more like 3 hours - "Greed" is a pompous, cheesy and dreadful satire lacking wit, laughs and bite. The end result is a unfunny film that largely falls flat, failing to either amuse or challenge you. I'm disappointed.

Rating: 5

We live in an era where wealth is distributed upwards and the gap between the haves and have-nots has become wider than ever. According to inequality org, the richest 1% of the world's population controls 45% of global wealth, whilst the poorest 64% of the population control less than 1% of the wealth. In 2018, Oxfam reported that the wealth of the 26 richest people in the world was equal to the combined wealth of the 3.5 billion poorest people. This is the milieu of Greed, a hilarious satire from prolific genre-hopping writer/director Michael Winterbottom. Examining how the rich get richer, the film focuses on a successful British clothing entrepreneur, and its bread and butter is the concomitant grotesquery that results when an individual has the same wealth as a small country. Mixing send-up and satire with more serious socio-economic points, Greed doesn't really do or say a huge amount that hasn't been done or said before, but it's entertaining, amusing, and undeniably relevant.

Sir Richard McCreadie (Steve Coogan) is one of Britain's richest men. The perma-tanned "self-made" billionaire is the owner of several clothing chains and is known as "the King of the High Street", although a less complimentary nickname is "Greedy" McCreadie. The non-linear narrative depicts 1) his rise to power, when, as a young man (played by a wonderfully loathsome Jamie Blackley), he opens multiple businesses (all of which fail) as he learns the ins and outs of asset-stripping and the importance of using foreign sweatshops; 2) in the modern-day, we see him hauled before a Parliamentary Select Committee convened to investigate the bankruptcy of one of his chains; and, 3) in the film's present, on the Greek island of Mykonos, the final (chaotic) touches are being put to McCreadie's Roman-themed 60th birthday bash - complete with mandatory togas, a fake coliseum, and a real, albeit somnolent, lion. Much of the story is told through the lens of McCreadie's "official biographer" Nick (David Mitchell), a classically-trained literature buff who drops quotes from Shakespeare and Shelley into everyday conversation, and who hates himself for agreeing to write a fawning celebration of McCreadie.

The idea that a billionaire could be so cut off from workaday reality as to stage a Roman-themed birthday party on a Greek island may sound far too on the nose, too ridiculously hubristic to say anything of any worth, too over-the-top to even function as satire. However, McCreadie is based on Sir Philip Green, chairman of the Arcadia Group, avoider of taxes, exploiter of the working-class, asset-stripper, and enemy of the #MeToo movement. Similarly, many of the details of McCreadie's ludicrous birthday are lifted verbatim from Green's very real 50th birthday celebrations in 2002 - when he flew 219 guests to Cyprus for a three-day toga party.

McCreadie, of course, is a hilariously despicable slimeball, a man who unironically feels hard done by when Syrian refugees show up on the (public) beach he's using for his birthday, and both Coogan and Blackley portray him as not only narcissistic and void of conscience, but as a completely classless philistine - whereas Nick, for example, can quote Shakespeare and recite Shelley, lofty symbols of Englishness both, McCreadie proudly gets his cultural know-how from BrainyQuote. However, the important point is that for all his loathsomeness, McCreadie is a symbol for the system that gave rise to and sustains him. For all his crass hubristic excess, McCreadie is neither an aberrant individual nor is he a criminal - he's an especially vulgar product of the system. And, with the crushing defeat of Labour in the 2019 English general election, it seems he's the product of a system which the vast majority of people appear to support.

The film gets pretty serious towards the end, and before the closing credits, a series of title cards detail some of the facts and figures of global economic disparity, particularly concerning the vast gulf between those who make the clothes we wear and those who sell them to us. Originally, these cards named specific brands as especially guilty of exploiting sweatshop employees, pointing out, for example, that workers in Myanmar earn $3.60 a day making clothes for H&M, whilst owner Stefan Persson is worth $18 billion, and workers in Bangladesh earn $2.84 a day making clothes for Zara, whilst owner Amancio Ortega is worth $68 billion. However, Sony Pictures International, which financed the film with Film4, refused to allow Winterbottom to use these cards, with company head Laine Kline telling him, "we're worried about the potential damage to Sony's corporate relations with these brands". And so replacement cards were used, which feature much of the same information but without reference to any specific companies or people. So how do we know what the original cards said? Because Winterbottom, very much in the viciously sardonic spirit of the film, read them out on-stage after the world première in Toronto! Kline, who was in the audience, was far from impressed, which may account for the shoddy advertising campaign, with the film being released into theatres with virtually no market awareness. Whatever the case, Kline seems unaware of the irony of his actions - in relation to a film which accuses the rich of all manner of shenanigans to insulate and protect themselves and their fortunes, a massive corporate entity has exerted its authority to protect other massive corporate entities. It's like something McCreadie himself would do.

Aesthetically, the film employs a plethora of techniques, including non-linear editing, direct-to-camera addresses, YouTube videos to provide exposition, split-screen, fake news footage, and title cards. However, it's at its most effective when at its simplest, particularly in scenes involving the wonderful Dinita Gohil as McCreadie's overworked, under-appreciated PA. Amanda's interactions with Nick provide the emotional core of the story, and there's nothing bombastic or ostentatious about their construction - it's all simple shot/counter-shot editing and blocking. And by far the film's best sequence, which comes towards the end, is another simple setup involving Amanda and McCreadie, wherein the scene tells its story not through aesthetic construction or even through dialogue, but through the expression on Gohil's face. It's the moment during which Winterbottom drops all pretence of comedy and focuses on the more serious issues that have hovered at the fringes since the opening seconds.

If I were to focus on any one problem, it would be two underdeveloped subplots. A (staged) reality TV show subplot involving McCreadie's daughter Lily (Sophie Cookson) provides for some very funny individual moments, but it contributes nothing whatsoever to the main plot. Additionally, the fact that McCreadie and his ex-wife Samantha (Isla Fisher) are still in love with one another is a theme which never really goes anywhere, which is a shame, as it could have provided some much-needed character development for her and some shades of grey for him.

For better or worse, we live in an age where there are more billionaires than ever before, and Greed is a comedy about the excess and disconnect of such people. However, so too is it a cautionary tale, a reminder that just because we're removed from exploitation doesn't mean such exploitation isn't happening.

Steeve Coogan is what makes Greed strong, but the rest of subplots and side stories gets muddled. Directed by Winterbottom, he put much effort to research on the wealthy and industry. And then the story really gets into an oblivion of the retail fashion industry.

It shows the exploitatiion behind the scenes, showcasing the workers behind the garment factory.the This is where Coogan's superb acting establishes much disdain for the people in fashion industry, like a viral injection develops throughout the film's characters.

But even as the plot thickens, it's narrative goes all over the place and it may cause annoyance.

Admittedly, I haven't watched much of Steve Coogan but what I have watched was quite funny . David Mitchell has a very dry , witty sense of humour which is excellent . He was great in Peep Show. So I was expecting this film to be funny . But it wasn't ....at all. I didn't laugh once. I actually fell asleep because it was so boring . There's a bunch of women who pop up in the film & aren't funny either nor are the supporting male actors. . This film was more like a strange documentary than a comedy film .We know how exploitative , greedy , ruthless , corrupt the Elite are . So highlighting the obvious is surely insulting our intelligence . Entertain instead of lecturing uplease!

Sir Richard was most likely based on Sir Phillip Green. The director wasn't bold enough to include the female celebrities aka 'working girls' parading around on Green's yacht! Lol!

A good film but kind of wanders with too many storylines. The ending jars with the feel of the overall story and the closing credits become preachy when the data should have been brought into the main story since that was the crux of the main storyline.