Windfall

2022 - 3 - 19

Post cover — Image courtesy of "MovieMaker Magazine"

Windfall Director Charlie McDowell Focused on Blocking For His ... (MovieMaker Magazine)

Windfall uses blocking and camera movement to get inside character. Classic noir, Hitchcock and Polanski inspired director Charlie McDowell.

“So they could be sitting there, but something has changed in them or a feeling about them is changed, and then the camera starts to move as a result of that.” So if one character is crossing the room, then the camera will dolly and pan with that character,” McDowell says. “We walked through this space, walked through every scene, and talked about where we felt the characters were in the space,” he says. “We weren’t even talking about where the camera would be, but more about the blocking. How does the way in which they shoot it change over the course of the movie?” McDowell says. How does the blocking change over the course of the movie?

'Windfall' review: Jesse Plemons shines in a mediocre Netflix thriller (Inverse)

'Windfall' is an uneven comedic thriller that is worth watching solely for Jesse Plemons' scene-stealing performance as an obnoxious billionaire.

Starring opposite Segel and Collins, two usually dependable performers who have very little to do here, Plemons delivers one of his biggest and most brazen performances to date. The plot gives it all the necessary ingredients to be a tense, straightforward home invasion thriller. The Netflix thriller feels like it could take place just about anywhere, and its characters feel like they could be just about anyone. Intent on buying a new life for himself, Segel’s stranger takes Plemons and Collins’ rich couple hostage and forces the former to agree to give him $500,000 of his own money. In these scenes, Windfall attempts to deliver its most direct moments of social commentary. In that way, the film ultimately feels the most indebted to the work of Joel and Ethan Coen, two filmmakers who are adept at injecting darkly comedic undertones into even their most intense thrillers.

Windfall (unknown)

“Windfall” is the kind of acting experiment that usually works for me. Trap three talented actors on a single set and bounce them off each other.

And the CEO knows that he’s probably on a number of enemies lists given how much downsizing he’s done to afford a place like this one. So much so that when he disappears for a long nighttime conversation between Collins and Segel, the film starts to sag. This isn’t exactly “Dog Day Afternoon.” It’s clear that the man isn’t in this for violence, and the CEO homeowner even tries to talk him through what to do next. However, the way McDowell and Segel approach this guy allows Plemons to steal the show as the most confident person in the room. And the premise here is strong enough to keep the film afloat for about an hour as these very different acting energies collide in the middle of the room. He starts to get a little more serious about the business at hand when he rifles through an office and finds some money hidden in a book.

Netflix’s 'Windfall' Is a Perfect Class-Rage Noir (unknown)

A tech billionaire confronts his burglar in the Netflix's latest thriller.

But whereas The One I Love had a science-fiction twist, Windfall is propelled by a real-life crisis: the gaping chasm between the incredibly rich and the rest of us, and the impossibility of bridging it unscathed. Despite its gleaming setting, Windfall strikes the tone of a noir, its story suffused with a cynicism as sweeping as the vistas its mansion overlooks. Watching Segel’s burglar bumble his way into increasingly grim circumstances, I was reminded of The Edukators, the 2004 German-Austrian crime drama about a trio of young radicals who decide to teach the wealthy a lesson by breaking into their homes just to unsettle them. We learn that the origin of the billionaire’s fortune is an algorithm for layoffs and that he doesn’t feel bad about having created it; he wastes little time asking the thief if he was one of the unlucky who lost their jobs because of his work. And although this man is a total amateur, he piles crime on top of crime, taking the well-heeled couple hostage. And the burglar is an oaf; he struggles to unclasp the wife’s purse, can’t keep his boots tied, and has tantrums every time something doesn’t go his way, which is frequently.

‘Windfall’ Review (unknown)

A wealthy couple is detained by an incompetent thief in this airless Netflix drama.

He might be the most inept robber since the doofuses in “Home Alone,” but his lack of skills proves irrelevant when the home’s owners, a tech billionaire and his wife (Jesse Plemons and Lily Collins), return unexpectedly and acquiesce to his demands for money. A scruffy thief (played by Jason Segel at his most gormless) is poking languidly around the property, as if trying it on for size. A frozen opening shot of the exterior of a luxury California home forewarns of the tedium to come.

Netflix’s thriller Windfall ponders the value of Mark Zuckerberg (unknown)

The new thriller Windfall stars Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog), Lilly Collins (Emily in Paris), and Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother) in a tense, ...

The latest film from director Charlie McDowell (The One I Love), now streaming on Netflix, is a Hitchcockian throwback, an exercise in restrained, clear filmmaking and the tension that arises when you put three people and a gun in a room together. In the ensuing one-act play, the real hostage isn’t a person, it’s the idea of the meritocracy, as Windfall slowly becomes a class-rage thriller about holding the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world prisoner. it’s only when the couple changes their plans and arrive to find him in their home that the film’s tense, 90-minute negotiation kicks off.