In “Old Henry,” director Potsy Ponciroli spilled a lot of blood on and around the porch of a frontier homestead. “And for what? For a little money,” as Fargo police chief Marge Gunderson put it a century later after solving an equally senseless crime. In his second film, “Greedy People,” Ponciroli swaps the lawless West for the well-policed Northeast of the present day, merging the town of Providence, Rhode Island, with a darkly comic money-making scheme.
This time, Ponciroli directs from a different script, and while the new film is even more Coen-esque than his first, it lacks the blunt, ruthless quality that marked Old Henry. That film paid respect to its influences; this one seems to borrow the whole damn uniform. Just look at how the film begins and ends with a deceptively effective female police chief (Uzo Aduba), who also happens to be the only character with her priorities straight. The only thing missing is the wood chipper.
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Here’s how it goes: It’s Wills (Himesh Patel), a young lawman starting his first day on the job, and he’s paired with Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an unruly cop with a lot of bad habits and an even worse mustache. Terry is a real piece of work, nearly bullying Will while blaring heavy metal music and forcing the rookie 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 been learning Chinese in his spare time.
Not much is happening in Providence, emphasizes this anything but exemplary cop, who advises the rookie to find a hobby. But that hardly applies to Will’s first hours on the job: a call comes in while Terry is busy. He misunderstands the radio code, lets himself into the mansion of the local seafood magnate Wallace (Nelson) and harasses his wife Virginia (Traci Lords), with unfortunate (unexpectedly fatal) consequences. It’s not all bad, however, because the panicked cops discover a bag of cash in the living room and decide to clean up the crime scene and make the woman’s accidental death look like a crime.
Hardly any of the behavior that screenwriter Mike Vukadinovich describes up to this point in the film resembles anything audiences might recognize in the real world, and while this Jerry Springer-worthy plot lacks the twisted appeal of true crime, Ponciroli has a colorful enough imagination to pique our curiosity. Perhaps most relatable is Will’s introduction to his personal life, in which we also meet his smart, pregnant wife Paige (Lily James), who specializes in cleaning up her husband’s messes.
Her family could use the money, although films like this don’t do anything lightly. The only mystery: Will some lucky soul keep the money, or will it end up blown to the winds, as in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”? The answer to that question usually reflects a moral assessment by the filmmakers, and according to “Old Henry,” no one is safe in Ponciroli’s hands, not even Nelson (who plays a much smaller role here).
As Greedy People progresses, the nonlinear script keeps showing flashbacks to reveal new and even more incongruous characters, like the masseur (Simon Rex) who happened to be upstairs when Virginia was killed, or a pair of hitmen identified as The Irishman (Jim Gaffigan) and The Colombian (José María Yazpik) who are somehow involved in things. Why a town as small as Providence needs two hitmen is unclear, but their involvement all but guarantees that the number of victims will rise.
What follows isn’t predictable so much as inevitable, and it feels like a missed opportunity on Ponciroli’s part not to focus more on what makes this project stand out: 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 maybe Me, Myself and Irene?). The plot could have been recycled from a dozen ’90s movies – overcomplicated Tarantino-style crime thrillers – while quirky casting choices like putting Lords and Rex in the same film are wasted by not having them in the same scene.
Terry is a scruffy, out-of-character role for Gordon-Levitt, which amounts to watching a Boy Scout play a bad cop. The film would be more effective if we saw him as menacing (his partner certainly does), although Greedy People seems to be about how even nice people turn evil if you throw enough money at 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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