Mark Reviews Movies: WINDFALL (2022)

Windfall, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 18, 2022

Sometimes, it feels as if the only difference between a thriller and a comedy of errors is whether or not we have a reason to care about the characters caught up in whatever mess the story has laid out for them. At the start of Windfall, an anonymous man finds himself in a place he shouldn't be, and we don't know whether to laugh at or be afraid for the bumbling/poor guy. There's tension in the situation, but it's also within ourselves, since we have no idea how we should be feeling about this.

Director Charlie McDowell, working from a screenplay by Justin Lader and Andrew Kevin Walker, clearly wants that uncertainty, because it continues through most of this tonally ambivalent film. Depending on whose perspective we consider the events, the situation is either absurd or frightening, and it's those things for completely different reasons. The film may make some obvious points about the struggle between classes and an economy based on how expendable ordinary people are in business, but as a game that's equal parts clashing tones and characters, it's consistently engaging.

The guy in the place he shouldn't be at the beginning is played by Jason Segel, whose character, as with the other three who figure into this tale, is never named. He's simply credited as "Nobody," because that's who he has to be in this situation, what others see him as, and how he feels in this moment of his life. We first meet Nobody lounging on the patio of palatial, remote estate in sunny California. He seems comfortable enough to belong there and too comfortable to actually belong here, given how he urinates in the shower and shatters an empty glass on the ground.

Searching the house, the guy eventually finds an expensive watch, some cash, and a pistol, and with his haul, he's ready to walk out the door. That's when a car arrives with the couple who actually own the place.

Nobody tries to hide, but he's soon discovered. His seemingly easy burglary immediately becomes a kidnapping.

We come to learn that the owners of the estate are an inordinately wealthy CEO and his wife. The business man is played by Jesse Plemons, and the wife is portrayed by Lily Collins. Both of them want the burglar out of the house as quickly as possible. Nobody wants the same thing.

After getting several thousand more dollars and barricading the couple in the sauna, Nobody seems to get what he wants, but then, he spots a security camera, looking right at him and his car on the side of the road. He returns to the house and holds the couple captive so that he can get more money, in order to start a new life. The CEO can make that happen, but it'll take a day for the cash to be delivered.

That's the basic setup, and on a foundational level, the rest of the plot is essentially a string of complications and obstacles that keep all three of these characters stuck in place. It's also—and more intriguingly—a series of negotiations, manipulations, deceptions, and moments of intentional or accidental honesty that cut to some truth about who these characters really are, what they actually want, and why the conflicts among all them go deeper than what we see on the surface.

What we learn for certain is that the CEO made his fortune by developing an algorithm that would determine which and how many employees companies could lay off in order to maximize profits. The suspicion, of course, is that the intruder suffered the consequences of that technology, and the fact that Lader and Walker don't give us a firm answer in that regard until the climax is more than a mystery. It keeps the story's focus on these interactions, regardless of the underlying personal motivations driving them. In certain ways, the omission elevates the conflict into the political realm, too, but mostly, it's about cutting to core of these characters' philosophies of the world and other people.

It's left specifically unspoken until later, but Segel's character is clearly a wounded victim of some real or perceived injustice. The actor balances a thin line between gaining sympathy for that status, with his hangdog looks and defeated attitude, and earning some sense of rising threat, on account of the anger that's also driving this character—and becomes more and more apparent as the long, frustrating wait for the delivery of that money continues. The CEO character is less uncertain, but Plemons' performance does evolve, even if the character doesn't. This is a man trying to establish and maintain some kind of control over the situation, and as he loses more and more of it, there's a mounting fear of what he might do to keep some sense of power.

Meanwhile, there's Collins' wife, who almost seems to be in the background of the power dynamic between the two men, save for a scene in which she describes to Nobody the choice she made on her wedding day. At first, she's depicted as a generically decent person, running a non-profit, who's aware of her husband's nature but also pragmatic about the world. In other words, we might be tempted to write off the character's role here, but it's fascinating how much her existence as the middle ground between the men opposite of her comes to determine what happens.

As for that, Windfall does eventually make a choice in terms of its tone and take a stand on the side of at least one character here. It's a cynical and surprisingly ruthless turn, but considering the stakes of this specific situation and the battle of philosophies on display, that's the only way it could go.

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