Film

Greed

Name: Greed
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 2019
Cast: Steve Coogan, David Mitchell, Isla Fisher, Asa Butterfield, Sophie Cookson

Other titles called Greed: the 1924 film.

Social drama

Michael Winterbottom's satire uses a billionaire's gaudy birthday bash on Mykonos as a springboard to eviscerate modern wealth, exploitation, and the hollow spectacle that buys respectability. Steve Coogan is magnetic as a man trying to rebrand himself at sixty. It's angry, smart, and occasionally hilarious—for viewers who appreciate their comedy with a edge.

TMDb rating

2.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like satire that bites hard while cracking jokes, the kind that lets a tycoon's vanity become the punchline and then makes you question your own clothes.

Skip it if the satire leans broad and the jumping between timelines can feel restless, so if subtle character work is what you want, this will frustrate.

What it asks of you: Hold on for a brisk hundred minutes of overlapping set pieces, where the tone shifts from giddy farce to a colder stare, and the jokes come thick and fast.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

In the Loop2009

Armando Iannucci's spin-off finds brilliance in procedural absurdity and profanity-laced dialogue. If you loved Greed's satirical bite, this political comedy has the same contempt for powerful people and their self-serving logic.

But The humour is relentlessly crude and the plot deliberately shapeless; it rewards rewatching more than clarity.

The Menu2022

A chef's tasting menu becomes a stage for class resentment and the performance of luxury. Like Greed, it uses spectacle and ceremony to expose what lies beneath wealth and exclusivity, with genuine menace underneath.

But It gets increasingly bleak and operatic; if you want comedy rather than dark parable, you'll feel it slipping away.

I, Daniel Blake2016

Ken Loach's Palme d'Or winner is Greed's moral inverse: ordinary people crushed by systems designed to humiliate them. It shares the same fury about inequality but pointed downward, not up.

But It's relentlessly grim with minimal humour. The righteousness can feel didactic to some viewers.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Greed

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Corporate2018

Both use ceremony and jargon as their target. Corporate is Greed's documentary twin—it shows you how the language actually works.

A sketch show that tears apart corporate culture with surgical precision. Each episode deconstructs wellness culture, HR-speak, and the language of exploitation—the intellectual skeleton beneath Greed's satirical flesh.

But It's sketch comedy, so uneven by nature; some bits land harder than others, and there's no narrative to hook you.

American Hustle2013

Con artists and the wealthy elite circling each other with charm and deception. It has Greed's interest in performance, fakery, and whether anyone is actually genuine beneath the surface.

But The style sometimes overwhelms substance, and it's more interested in spectacle than anger.

The Wolf of Wall Street2013

Scorsese's three-hour bender into excess and amorality. Both films use a protagonist's charisma to pull you into spaces you should find appalling, then implicate the viewer in the seduction.

But At nearly four hours and deeply indulgent, it might feel like it's celebrating what it claims to critique.

A Serious Man2009

The Coen Brothers' blackly comic examination of a man trying to hold onto respectability while everything dissolves. It shares Greed's interest in performance, status anxiety, and the randomness of consequence.

But The humour is oblique and the narrative resists easy resolution; some find it frustrating rather than funny.

Thank You for Smoking2005

A tobacco lobbyist uses charm and rhetoric to sell the unsellable. Like Greed, it's a comedy built on the nauseating skill of powerful people to rationalize harm and maintain their image.

But The satire is lighter and more playful than pointed; it never quite achieves Greed's fury.

Parasite2019

Bong Joon-ho's thriller uses class as its engine. Where Greed dissects wealth from above, this examines it from below—both films reveal the violence lurking beneath the surface of inequality.

But The tone shifts dramatically into thriller territory; it's less consistently comic and more structurally surprising.

The Death of Stalin2017

A pitch-black comedy about power, ambition, and people scrambling to look good while serving no one but themselves. It shares Greed's scathing view of men in charge and the absurdity of their self-regard.

But The black-and-white format and Soviet setting make it feel like a curio; the humour is very dry and dour.

Weekend1967

Both are polemics dressed as art. Greed makes you laugh at the rich; Godard makes you question whether cinema itself can contain the critique.

Godard's experimental film uses a traffic jam as the frame for civilisation's collapse. Like Greed, it's furious about consumption and complicity, but it dismantles narrative itself—no comfort of a three-act story.

But It's avant-garde and difficult; the form actively resists enjoyment. You need patience and a willingness to feel alienated.