Steve Coogan excels in Michael Winterbottom's funny, angry, compelling broadside, GREED

OK: It wears its heart on its sleeve, as message movies from Brit director and sometimes writer, Michael Winterbottom often do. But since that message is an important and timely one, only the very wealthy, along with some of us more persnickety critics, will probably mind much. If GREED is neither as funny nor as incisive as it might have been, what's there is certainly smart and entertaining enough to pass muster as a worthwhile trip to the movies. Plus there's its star, Steve Coogan (at right), giving yet another of his knockout performances as Sir Richard McCreadie (rhymes with greedy), a supposedly uber-successful British retailer who seems to combine the nasty savvy of a Murdoch with the utter incompetence of Donald Trump.

Mr. Winterbottom, shown at left, gives us a little history of Sir Richard (even as a child, this guy was a major ass-wipe) then shows us how, as an adult, the man has taken over various companies, only to destroy them, while making himself and his family even wealthier. Most important are the sections set on the sub-continent where poorly-paid labor in the factories that supply McCreadie with his products are worked literally to death to make this man even richer. We also see Mr. Greedy making quite a show when called before a government inquiry into his dealings (below), during which Coogan brings forth his exquisite combo of smarminess and "hurt hauteur," as he defends himself and we learn even more of his misdeeds.

Throughout all this, comedy mixes with ugliness in roughly 50-50 fashion, and while we laugh at the antics, all of it comes at the price of our near-constant realization that this is Capitalism writ large and lousy: the ongoing destruction of current western civilization -- not to mention most of the rest of the world.

What saves the movie as entertainment is its central "event," a 60th in-costume birthday party for McCreadie that we watch being organized on a picturesque Greek island then brought to very creepy fruition, as family and fake-friends gather to celebrate this supposedly successful entrepreneur.

We meet his ex-wife (Isla Fisher, above, right), his mother (Shirley Henderson, below, left: an enabler par excellence), and especially his on-the-cusp-of-adulthood son (Asa Butterfield, below, right), who discovers a delightful and appropriate -- if ghastly -- way to work out his Oedipal issues.

As usual with Winterbottom, the camera is constantly on the move, with humor, insult, ugliness and message flying in from all directions. Thanks to the generally up-to-snuff dialog, and to the skill of Coogan and the rest of the cast, Greed never loses its momentum.

Look for a number of other famous performers (like Stephen Fry, above, left) to make appearances here, too. If the film doesn't offer state-of-the-art humor, satire and finger-pointing consistently, it hits its marks often enough to keep you alternately angry and entertained.

From Sony Pictures Classics and running 104 minutes, the film opened last week on the coasts and will hit theaters nationwide this Friday, March 6. Here in South Florida, you can find it at the following theaters: in the Miami area at the AMC Aventura Mall,  CMX Brickell City Center,  Silverspot Miami, Regal South Beach, and AMC Sunset Place; in Broward county at the Cinemark Paradise in Davie and Regal Magnolia Place in Coral Springs; in the Palm Beach county at the Movies Delray and Movies of Lake Worth, AMC Indian River,  Majestic 11, Regency Cinema 8 in Stuart, Regal Royal Palm, Cobb's Downtown at The Gardens in Palm Beach Gardens, and in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood and Cinemark Palace. Elsewhere? Click here to find a theater near you.