Windfall

Jason Segel breaks into the isolated luxury villa of tech billionaire Jesse Plemons and his wife, Lily Collins. They suddenly appear and Segel has to hold them at gunpoint and decide how he his going to get out of the mess he's got himself into.

Interesting chamber piece set entirely at the villa (very nice it is too) and therefore you can easily see it as a neat 3 act play performed on stage. Whilst it starts lightly enough with a degree of humour, the tables turn on Segel as Plemons starts to get increasingly angered at the situation, letting his true colours shine through. As the film progresses it becomes pretty clear what the direction of travel is going to be, although this doesn't alter the fact the film has a neat ending. All 3 leads do well, but Plemons keeps the electricity going with his performance as an increasingly unlikeable rich guy.

The most intriguing thing about Windfall is that it makes us want to know more about the trio of characters played by Plemons, Collins, and Segel by the time the credits roll. In the beginning, Windfall puts across a largely harmless hostage situation featuring these nameless characters, but as it progresses, we get to know there's more to it than what meets the eye. The film is coated in bits of wry humor, primarily thanks to Plemons' arrogant billionaire feat and his shunning of the world filled with freeloaders and nobodies. It then makes complete sense when you see Segel being credited as "Nobody."

The score by Danny Bensi & Saunder Jurriaans is a crucial piece of this puzzle, intensely punctuating almost every scene. Director Charlie McDowell treats us to a dark, twisted climax that not only makes the most sense, given all we know about the trio, but it also gives Lily Collins her shining moment! I understand that Windfall isn't as conventionally funny or thrilling as most of us would've wanted, but I'm glad the director chose the slow-burn route for this subject.

It starts off with kind of a wacky, Coen Brothers energy and then turns into a much darker thriller. It's an intriguing premise and I liked the cast, but it feels a bit undercooked.

Things happen that don't have proper buildup or explanation and some of the logic is a bit iffy. It's interesting, however it can really drag with some of the long, awkward staring into space scenes. It's definitely not the best Netflix film, but far from the worst.

We've seen this hostage-ransom story a million times, and this is nothing new in that regard. However the tone and atmosphere that the film provides (heavy lifted by Danny Bensi's 'noir-ish' score) really does make this an enjoyable easy watch.

It's another 'pandemic' film in which restrictions meant there needed to be a barebones cast and one location, but thankfully this flavour of cinema is one of my favourites; you seldom get over saturated plot information in this 'genre' and are left to just enjoy the craft of filmmaking on a mostly technical level. Windfall is no different. Lack of plot, suspect story twists, and a short film script stretched into a feature length film doesn't take away from it being a satisfying watch.

This movie could have been a good short movie of 25 minutes duration as only last 10 Minutes and initial 15 minutes are important . Rest of the time is just filler. It is not near to any Hitchcock movie other than music part of it. In case you have watched all good movies and you have nothing to watch than give it a try or otherwise skip it. But is timepass movie.