‘Windfall’ Review: Coolly Efficient Noir Traps Lily Collins and Jesse Plemons in a Moneyed Paradise
Guy Lodge Film CriticA well-heeled young couple arrive for a weekend away at their Ojai country pad, only to find it already occupied by a criminal drifter out to take not just their money, but their happiness too, over the course of a tense, tetchy overnight hostage situation.
But our sympathies aren’t directed exactly as you might expect in “Windfall,” a tightly wound sunshine noir that borrows from hardboiled classics like “The Desperate Hours,” while revisiting the kind of chilly, compressed relationship anatomy that director Charlie McDowell essayed in his debut “The One I Love.” Blending the oddball sensibility of McDowell and regular co-writer Justin Lader with the nastier genre smarts of “Se7en” scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, this low-key Netflix holds to its intriguing promise for a crisp 90 minutes, though even its climax is muted by design.
A trio of stars all playing effectively against type will be the chief draw for McDowell’s film — his second for Netflix, following 2017’s ambitious but uninviting sci-fi romance “The Discovery” — as it lands directly on the streaming platform, though it’s safe to say not all “Emily in Paris” fans will follow winsome Lily Collins into a very different, more morally questioning form of lifestyle porn.
As a corporate trophy wife with a wistful yen for her less privileged past, she’s cast as the congenial middle ground between two contrasting figures of toxic masculinity: Jesse Plemons, as the slappable face of excessively moneyed entitlement, and Jason Segel, as a ne’er-do-well striver consumed by aspirational envy.Not that we’re supposed to overly attach ourselves to any one character in a film that doesn’t even grant them the courtesy of names, with the script dismissively.
