In the film “Old Henry,” directed by Potsy Ponciroli, Old Henry spills blood around the porch of an American frontier homestead. As well Amazon police chief Morrow Gunderson played by Frances McDormand remarked about another one stupid crime a century later, “And for What? Just for a Little Money.’ Reuniting with the Coen brothers’ actor Tim Blake Nelson in the second picture ‘Greedy People’ of his career, Penirolol directs a black comedy about a quick cash grab in the present day town of Providence in North America’s South Carolina state.
This time Ponciroli does not have the cinematographic tools and narrative arsenal of the Coen brothers since he is directing someone else’s script. While the new movie is much more closely related to Coens production than the first movie of Ponciroli, it lacks untamed and brutish cut that Western “Old Henry” has. That film gave respect towards its creators; this one appears to be taking the entire uniform. You can check how it begins and ends with a seemingly cleverly written character, the police chief played by Uzi Aruba, who was the only one concerned with most of the action. Now we only need the woodchipper.
So here is how it goes: Today is Will’s (Himesh Patel) first day as a police officer. His partner on his first day is Terry (Joseph Gordon Levitt), a disgraced and unruly police officer with an awful mustache. He becomes such a piece of work and all makes it his business to target Will, turning the volume of his heavy metal music up and when the newbie has to wait outside while he goes inside an immigrant housewife for a minute. The way this guy does not make any racially charged comments and instead, tells you he is picking up Chinese in his free time makes him even more unbelievable. He makes you think he is the dynamic guy of the place.
So you would expect there to be little action in Providence but not this officer, who suggests the newbie get a hobby. But that’s hardly true of Will’s first few hours on the job: A call comes in as Terry is sitting on the pot. Assuming the radio code means something else, he fishes out the key to a local seafood mogul’s mansion where Nelly Wallace (Nelson) lives and walks into the mansion and inadvertently shocks his wife, Virginia (Traci Lords) with unforeseen consequences. However, not everything is ruined as the terrified cops find a bag of money on the floor in the living room and decide to cover the crime scene and turn the lady’s unwitting death into a murder.
Up to this point in the movie, hardly any of the actions that Vukadinovich has described made me think this was anything close to reality. True crime exploits are ten a penny in this Jerry Springer worthy story, but Ponciroli has an interesting enough vision of life to hold our attention. Perhaps the only relatable perspective is that of Will’s family, where the audience is introduced to his lovely wife Paige (Lily James) who is pregnant and deals with the stress that her husband puts the family through.
There’s no doubt in my mind that this family could use some financial aid, though it can be pretty straightforward since it’s one of those films. The only suspense: Will there be a cash prize, or will it end up flying with the wind like in the “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”? Those questions usually have some kind of answer that the filmmakers feel about it, and based on the picture “Old Henry”, it now seems that anyone can be the target even Nelson (whose character is also downsized in this film).
As the story of “Greedy People” is told, events move back and forth in time and it unveils more dubious characters, including the upstairs masseur, Simon Rex, who was present on the scene of Virginia’s murder as well as two assassins (The Irishman, Jim Gaffigan, and the Colombian, Jose Maria Yapok) who are also somehow involved in the mess. One can only guess why a place as tiny as Providence needs two assassins; however it is clear that their involvement makes it obvious that the body count would be large.
What comes next is not so much a suspense as it is the outcome which in itself is a missed chance on the part of Ponciroli not to have emphasized more on the unique feature of this project which is not the greedy people but the rich, the place where it all happened. I can hardly remember the last time a movie set entirely in South Carolina was shown (maybe “The Notebook”). The storyline would have been used in over a dozen movies made in the nineties overly executed crime thrillers made in the Tarantino way while imaginative casting decisions such as Lords and Rex being in the same film and not having CB in the same scene are overshadowed.
Scruffy looks aside, it’s hard to believe big action star Gordon Levitt would ever play that role. It’s like watching a boy scout trying to be a bad cop! The movie would fare better if we look at him as menacing (his partner certainly does), whereas ‘Greedy People’ aims to suggest that even the most decent people can be corrupted if sufficient wealth is dangled before them. It’s unfortunate that they do not see matters as Marge Gunderson does: ‘There’s more to life than a little money, you know.’
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