My Review of "Greed"

Greed is a little known movie that came out in 2019. I'm sure the subject matter was a bit much for some but it's nevertheless true in some ways. Within the message of the movie however is a crazy fictional story that is almost as interesting as the message they are trying to convey.

The movie starts out with the main protagonist, Richard, in his heyday. He looks really successful as he's handing his wife a large sum of money. Then we go into a lot of cuts to different times in his life. This may seem a bit confusing while watching this movie but after a while you start to understand what's going on. Admittingly, I was lost when they were jumping scenes.

There are 3 time queues that they jump to. There's the present day where he's organizing a spectacular birthday party for himself. Then there's the inquisition where he seems to be in trouble with the government about taxes or something. It doesn't really tell you why he's there in the first place but government officials seem to be publicly asking him serious questions about his business transactions of the past. Finally there's the story telling of his life from youth to adulthood.

It is essentially the life of Richard and we see why he had become as successful as he had become. The issues with his success is the morality of the things that he did in order to obtain that success. This morality ties in with a lot of billionaires out there in the world. We see that he is totally taking advantage of the global market by bargaining already poor companies in underdeveloped countries. He also takes advantage of large businesses by duping them into deals that are financially advantageous to him.

From a viewer standpoint you can see how horrible Richard is because he's pretty much a sociopath trying to become as rich as possible. Then on another side I see that he was brought up this way because of certain circumstances of his past. In this world it is pretty much ingrained in our brains that we have to become capitalists in order to be successful in life.

As much as the world changes throughout the years, it seems that these sociopathic billionaires in movies never seem out of place. I guess the same can be said for billionaires around the world today and this is what the movie is trying to get at. Even in the end credits the movie will then explain real life issues that are a result of our greed for fast fashion in particular.

Fast fashion is basically getting really cheap labor to create clothes and then branding it with a higher end sticker in order for people to buy the clothes. This seems to have worked for many billionaires in the world.

Another scam they kind of touch upon is the purchase of large corporations or businesses in order to leach money off of them. Richard had a nice little scam where he would borrow large sums of money and then purchase large well known companies. He would then leach the money off the companies. Since companies are considered individuals by the government, it would be the company and not Richard that would suffer the consequence of Richards borrowing.

It's pretty ingenious because it works in real life. This is only one of the ways that the rich avoid taxes. The movie goes on to explain a few other ways in which the rich can avoid even more taxes. I was kind of familiar with some of these tactics but this movie goes into even more detail without outright telling us in some narration.

Overall, I thought the movie was a little clumsy in the beginning but overall an entertaining piece because of its message. There is a lot of clumsiness to this movie but the actors do a good job in putting personality in their characters. You truly understand their motivations without too many holes. There are some storylines that go nowhere but I guess that's the case in a lot of movies nowadays. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. It will be even more interesting for those that are interested in the global financial situations that we're experiencing today.