The devil’s in the retail in the trail­er for Michael Winterbottom’s Greed

Stroll up any UK high street and you’ll see a hand­ful of recur­ring brand names: Zara, H&M, Uniq­lo, etc. Greed, the new satire from Michael Win­ter­bot­tom, puts fast-fash­ion hous­es like this in its crit­i­cal crosshairs, with a tru­ly ghast­ly man as the liv­ing embod­i­ment of their many sins.

That man would be Sir Richard McCread­ie (Steve Coogan), known as ​“Greedy McCread­ie” to the many busi­ness asso­ciates, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and ordi­nary cit­i­zens who hate his guts. One of the rich­est men in the world (and not always by the most above-board means), he rep­re­sents all the unearned deca­dence that’s made vil­lains out of the one-percenters.

The film plays out over the days lead­ing up to his 60^th birth­day par­ty on the Greek island of Mykonos, an over-the-top bash mod­elled after his favorite movie Glad­i­a­tor. The com­bi­na­tion of raw hubris, unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions, and an exas­per­at­ed work­force made up in part of under­paid immi­grant refugees all con­spire to turn the event into a fias­co, however.

Also in the mix is reporter Nick (David Mitchell), on the scene to gath­er facts for McCreadie’s puff-piece biog­ra­phy. He ends up dig­ging deep­er and deep­er into the uneth­i­cal busi­ness prac­tices at play, and pro­vides Win­ter­bot­tom with a mouth­piece for his most aggres­sive jabs.

Equal parts com­e­dy of errors and Big Short-style dis­sec­tion of cap­i­tal­is­tic over­growth, it’s a wicked­ly plea­sur­able time for we shoul­der-chipped mem­bers of the pro­le­tari­at. Not to men­tion the hor­rif­ic sideshow that is Coogan’s heinous capped den­tures, as arti­fi­cial and blind­ing­ly white as a flu­o­res­cent lightbulb.

Greed comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 21 Feb­ru­ary, 2020.