The cinema landscape as of late has been heavily populated with enough eat-the-rich stories to choke out every billionaire on earth. The latest is Coup! (now streaming on Hulu), which smacks of wearying familiarity, not just in the trappings of its subgenre, but itâs also a Covid movie. In its favor, though, is an ever-entertaining Peter Sarsgaard in the lead, playing a twinkle-in-his-eye rabblerouser who sets his sights on a big fat phony ripe to be shish-kabobed. Is his amusing performance enough to make the movie viable viewing? Letâs find out.
COUP!: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Right below the seam of the chefâs hat is a bullet hole. Unfortunately, the hat is still on a manâs head. So it goes, right? Another man (Sarsgaard) absconds with the dead chefâs passport, shaving down to a mustache and smudging the photo so he can now assume the identity of Floyd Monk. And so we will heretofore refer to him as such. New Floyd sneaks Old Floydâs body onto a police truck piled with the remains of poor souls who succumbed to the flu pandemic. Floyd Monk is dead, long live Floyd Monk. Flies buzz loudly and mercilessly around the bodies. Itâs 1918.
Elsewhere, in a sprawling country manse on an island, JC Horton (Billy Magnussen) pounds away at a typewriter. Heâs a writer for The Progressive Times who uses his column space for righteous screeds against the Woodrow Wilson administration, condemning it for its handling of the pandemic. Horton believes everything needs to be shut down and stumps for immigrants, the poor and people of color. He reports from the frontlines of riots in the streets. Yet he never leaves his cushy home, where he isolates with his wife, Julie (Sarah Gadon), and their two children. He swims in an indoor pool and employs a staff â do not call them servants, because thatâd be not particularly progressive â to care for the children and cook fancy vegetarian meals. And Horton has his sights on bigger things than being a newspaperman, namely, running for office. âWe are conscientious objectors,â explains Julie, somewhere between the soup and main courses.
Hortonâs new cook is our curious, charismatic friend Floyd Monk, who carries with him an air of mischief bordering on malevolence. Whatâs he building in there? âIn thereâ being his head, of course. He plants the seeds of revolt in the minds of the other staff members, and the one who isnât on board with his notions gets poison-mushroomâd and sent to the hospital from which she shanât return, because the ferries have been shut down. Then Floyd starts entertaining the children in a manner that Horton canât because heâs so prim and proper, and letting Julie drop in on card games with the staff. Whatâs next? Upstaging Horton during a very manly deer hunting trip? Cuckolding him? This Horton guy is quite the sleazy hypocrite. Itâd be a shame if someone yanked his draws down in front of everyone else, wouldnât it?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Some of the infiltrate-from-the-inside fodder of Saltburn and Parasite meets a bit â but just a bit! â of the puking from Triangle of Sadness.
Performance Worth Watching: Floyd Monk is in the upper-middle tier of rogues in Sarsgaardâs gallery, and he plays the character as part pirate, part con artist, an agent of chaos with a secret agenda.
Memorable Dialogue: A classic mutter-under-your-breath-and-âcorrectionâ exchange:
Floyd: Kiss my ass, nancy boy.
Horton: What?
Floyd: Why donât we get sassafras for the boy?
Sex and Skin: Nothing worth mentioning.
Our Take: Letâs face it, writer/directors Joseph Schuman and Austin Stark arenât saying, spoofing or satirizing anything we havenât seen or heard before about pandemics, politics and the economic-slash-cultural divide. It all sucks and is full of bad actors acting in bad faith with bad intentions, and we theoretically should cheer any incidence of them showing their asses to the world. Itâs a familiar quasi-revenge fantasy of the type that could use a little artful freshening in the realm of cinema, and doesnât really get that here. Itâs not about money, but power and control, and all that. Some will be frustrated that this doesnât really take a stand politically, by its somewhat scattershot satirical approach, but frankly, in a world ruled by black-and-white extremity, a little âpolitical incoherenceâ is just fine. People and politics should be hard to pin down. Complexity skews closer to truth.
The filmmakers are thankfully smarter and savvier in their casting than their thematically derivative screenplay. Sarsgaard-as-scoundrel is always a welcome sight, the actor working the ethical gray areas with savvy charm, and Magnussen is delightful as a slightly haughty spineless worm. Gadon could use a more full-bodied character, one that isnât quite so deferent to the whims of the plot, but she makes the most of the few instances she gets to show Julieâs rougher edges. Thereâs a nagging sense that Faran Tahir and Skye P. Marshallâs roles as poorly paid servants is just tokenism in a movie that seems to be critical of such things. But the members of this talented ensemble make the most of their moments, underscoring the notion that Coup! is more of a lightly conscientious amusement than a scathing op-ed.
Our Call: The spirited, lightly underplayed performances make Coup! worth a look. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Coup!’ on Hulu, an Eat-the-Rich Pandemic Satire Buoyed by Peter Sarsgaard appeared first on Decider.
