For those who can stay awake till the ultimate moments of “Windfall,” then sure, one thing thrilling really occurs. However that’s a really lengthy wait in Charlie McDowell’s oppressive Netflix drama, a gabby hostage film with a single, covetable location and three unappealing characters.
A frozen opening shot of the outside of a luxurious California residence forewarns of the tedium to return. A scruffy thief (performed by Jason Segel at his most gormless) is poking languidly across the property, as if making an attempt it on for measurement. He could be essentially the most inept robber for the reason that doofuses in “Residence Alone,” however his lack of abilities proves irrelevant when the house’s homeowners, a tech billionaire and his spouse (Jesse Plemons and Lily Collins), return unexpectedly and acquiesce to his calls for for cash. Extra, they even encourage him to up his asking value.
Shot in Ojai in 2020 (not removed from the place McDowell filmed his 2014 function, “The One I Love”), “Windfall” is dramatically flat and logically wanting. Because the three look forward to the agreed-upon loot to reach, the meandering script (by Justin Lader and Andrew Kevin Walker) features a farcical sauna lockdown and a shock go to from a luckless gardener. A number of escape alternatives are ignored, particularly by the spouse, who spends many of the film lounging and searching fed up. One can hardly blame her.
But regardless of the shambolic plot and shuffling digicam (briefly roused to a dash throughout a woodland chase), Plemons digs beneath his character’s vanity to unearth one thing like disgust — for his marriage, his cash and his subjugation by a ridiculous interloper.
“Why can we preserve pretending this man is an precise menace?,” he asks his spouse, angrily. He ought to most likely be asking the screenwriters.
Windfall
Rated R for a grasping husband and a spouse gone wild. Working time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Netflix.