Windfall is a study in failed opportunities. It has all the right ingredients, but the overall result in underbaked.
It begins stylishly enough with a steady shot that harkens back to the golden age of cinema. A perfect vacation home. A man. A man goes through it but treats it with resentment and crudeness, so that you know it isn’t his. And sure enough, it isn’t. He is only there to rob it. The place belongs to a tech tycoon who promptly shows up with his trophy wife in tow just as the thief is about to slip away. And then the drama ensues. Because the thief (who remains unnamed throughout the movie) just cannot seem to leave no matter how much he tries. In some movies, villains get killed because they take too long delivering their final speech. In this one, the thief gets undone mostly by his shabby planning and his shoelaces. Yep, shoelaces. This would be a way different movie if the thief had only worn slip-ons. The eerie doppelgängerish echo of his dad and an indie darling Charlie McDowell is once again mixing business with pleasure by casting his significant other in the leading role. First it was Rooney Mara in the Discovery, now it’s Collins, who is also set to star in his next feature. Collins is sort of like a lesser version of Mara (or lesser Emilia Clarke whom McDowell has also dated albeit not long enough to make a movie with – boy, does this guy have a type), but at least she’s beginning to look her age, wherein before her slight presence was too childlike to be taken seriously. She certainly got a meaty role to play with here, but the thing is technically everyone does. There are really only three main roles. She doesn’t get to steal the show, that’s what everyone’s favorite Jesse Plemmons is for. The least likely of Hollywood leading men, the man with neither the face nor the body for it, Plemmons makes up for it with plenty of talent and a strange sort of mesmeric screen presence. In this movie, he’s a prototypical arrogant-scumbag-with-money-and-brains and he plays it up with gusto. But it is still a cliché of a role. Which is one of the downfalls of this movie. Collins plays his wife, a dissatisfied and embittered woman who is less than happy about having to sleep in the bed she made. Another cliché. Rounding it up is Jason Segel’s thief. This character is actually so underdeveloped, it barely passes for a cliché. Or a character. Segel (recycled from McDowell’s Discovery) has a sort of charming hangdog sadsack presence that he served him throughout his career fairly well, but it doesn’t do much for him either. His motivations are barely revealed, he’s almost as clueless as Plemmons is manipulative. In fact, Plemmons literally has to instruct him on how to rob him properly. Overall, though, it’s a storm in a teacup, at best. It could have been so much more – a commentary on class warfare or socioeconomic imbalance or just an expression of righteous rage at the 1%. Instead, it’s a lukewarm pot of talking that never really boils. Technically, the ending is supposed to be the boiling point, but, sadly, it’s just another cliché. Hell hath no fury and all that. The end result is a prettily shot and well-acted character drama that is woefully underwritten and underplotted and ultimately kind of pointless. It’s short enough, considerately, but it doesn’t offer much for your time. More of a might have been of a movie. Charlie McDowell’s career thus far has had a pronounced downward trajectory, from the acclaimed The One I Love to the lesser but still good Discovery to now this. The next movie he’s working on sounds great, so maybe then…
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