Coup!

Jaunty class-war drama "Coup" has a decent premise & good performances, but its main characters are all so dislikable that it fails to hold attention. As the 1918 Spanish Flu bites, well-to-do journo Billy Magnussen secretly flees with wife Sarah Gadon & kids to his island country estate, pretending to still be in NY as he lambasts the govt to fuel his own political ambitions... til mysterious new chef Peter Sarsgaard stokes ill-feeling among his staff & family, as the 'plague' starts to grip the island, and the poop hits Magnussen's fan. Co-writers / co-directors Austin Stark & debutant Joseph Schuman offer an interesting analogy... but it just isn't interesting nor engaging enough.

What if the class structures of the early 1900s, which aren't really that much different than they are today, were isolated and broken down bit by bit? The movie Coup! Attempts to do just that, taking its eccentric cast of characters on an adventure through anarchy, madness, and self-discovery. Can it successfully blend this heavy message with its wit and charm?

Whether you enjoy the humor in this film or not, Coup! Is certainly an interesting look at class structure and how that structure can break down, given the right circumstances. It is a film with a lot to say and is able to say it rather well, mostly due to the talent of the cast. Clocking in at a crisp 90 minutes, and assuming you beheaded my warning about the humor and tone, you will not regret spending an hour and a half with these colorful characters.

The film takes advantage of a century-old event to deal with a subject that could not be more relevant today.

This film shows in a casual and clever way the class society and at the same time presents an alternative, which only emerges through a social crisis.

It is structured like a thriller and manages to maintain a constant tension, but includes various aspects of living together as a society, without falling into a black and white thinking.

Instead of showing that the rich can't help exploiting their power and giving them some kind of legitimacy, as in films like "Triangle of Sadness", the film finds a much more clever solution without being cautionary.

A sort of new "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The eternal theme of the confrontation between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles, in which there is no clear good and evil, sides of light and darkness. Here, however, in the Dionysian principle there is less truth than in "The Cuckoo's Nest", and here it is more like a devil who can get to his victims only through their weaknesses and vices. This amazing ambivalence in every moment of the film, like in Merezhkovsky's novels, where good and evil are so mixed up with each other that you begin to understand they are just sides of the same coin. And this depth is right up to the very last frame, literally.

And not ship wrecked on a tropical island, but stranded on a city island in an ocean of the Spanish flu. Instead of a steadfastly loyal, upstanding butler, we have a roguish, scheming cook, wheedling his way into an upper class family. Of course the comparisons only go so far, Coup is a far darker more sinister affair than the 1957 classic comedy. The social commentary presented here is apparent from the start, there is little in the way of a gentle progression as circumstances worsen.

The master to servant relationship on which the plot is hung is effective enough, but both characters have such unlikeable traits, that it may be hard to whole heartedly root for either in this war of the classes.

It's entertaining enough, but the 98 minutes runtime seemed to drag at times, the ending was well done, and satisfying, depending on your social justice standpoint I guess?