Greed is a kind of melodrama mockumentary which is centred on the fictional high-street fashion mogul called Sir Richard "Greedy" McCreadie. This film shows him preparing for his Roman themed 60th birthday party on the Island of Mykonos.
McCreadie has been suffering from bad publicity following a catastrophic performance in front of a parliamentary committee. Now all the high-profile celebrities are starting to pull out of his party. A certain star at will be at the party is Clarence, a real lion which has been brought for a re-creation of the Colosseum scene from the Gladiator film.
Steve Coogan plays Greedy McCreadie, who has a very orange tan, extremely white teeth, alpha-male grey hair and loves an open necked shirt. Coogan puts on a good performance with this character yet this isn’t a very challenging role to portray. McCreadie is a very shallow man yet entertaining to watch. Greed is an account of Philip Green's life, there are many similarities like McCreadie leaves boarding school early and goes to work to help his mother. Like Green, he builds a high-street empire with cheap manufacturing. Green held a toga party on Cyprus for his 50th party while McCreadie is having a toga party on Mykonos. As there are so any similarities, it makes us question why little things were changed, why not just follow the life-story precisely.
Isla Fisher plays McCreadie's first wife. It is in her name all of his tax-avoiding profits are registered in Monaco. Fisher and Coogan have an interesting relationship on screen, as we are aware, they have both moved on yet there is still some kind of connection between both of those characters. Shirley Henderson plays Coogan's elderly Irish mum, her performance is enjoyable with the limited screen time she has. Asa Butterfield also puts on a good performance as McCreadie's son, Fin. We see his struggle with his father, they don't see eye to eye and basically Butterfield's character just wants his father dead. There is an eerie resemblance between father and son, we see this at the end with Butterfield's speech which something very much like his dad would say. Will history repeat itself now with Fin?
Along with the family, Sarah Solemani plays the harassed and most likely overworked assistant whose job it is to book bug celebrities such as Elton John to play at the party. Tim Key plays Sam, the supervisor who has been contracted to make the Colosseum in time for the party but the workers aren’t working quick enough. Sam is a frustrated character and Key does a great job. His rant of anger and frustration is probably one of the funniest moments of this entire film, as we understand his anger yet it is such a dramatic way to react. Finally, David Mitchell plays the cynical journalist now biographer whom McCreadie has hired to write a book about his life.
This film shows us how all these characters are preparing for the party mixed with flashbacks of McCreadie in school and showing us how he built his empire and stores and then put them out of business. We have scenes in Sri Lanka, which show how he has exploited developing world labour yet acts as if they are exploiting him with their prices.
Not only does this film deal with the wages of developing world women who create many high brand clothes that a lot of us wear or own. While also following McCreadie and how his party is coming together. This film also deals with the subject of refugees and in this film, it is Syrian refugees. McCreadie doesn’t like the refugees who are living on Mykonos beach and tries to have them removed.
Characters and real issues are given enough time to develop as this film jumps about a lot. It feels as if this film is a bit confused as at one point it tries to be a mockumentary then we sort of lose that along the way. It tries to be funny while some moments so provide a giggle, it isn’t laugh-out hilarious. There are some good performances yet these good performances can't make up for the slow and lacking script which makes certain scenes feel boring.
This film really highlights how little women are paid who make the clothes we wear in developing worlds. Yet it feels confused with what kind of film it wants to be. Greed is good but it could have been so much better considering it had such a strong cast.
