A well-heeled young couple arrive for a weekend away at their Ojai country pad, only to find it already occupied by a criminal drifter out to take not just their money, but their happiness too, ove…
Not that we’re supposed to overly attach ourselves to any one character in a film that doesn’t even grant them the courtesy of names, with the script dismissively labeling them as “Wife,” “CEO” and “Nobody,” respectively. There’s more than a hint of irony to the last of those appellations, as Segel’s character repeatedly squirms out of offering any personal details about his past or present, while considering his future only in theoretical terms.
In a wordless seven-minute opening sequence, he’s introduced skulking around the modernist, expensively spartan Ojai estate to which the film’s action is wholly confined: sunning himself on the patio, picking fruit from meandering orange groves, and finally rifling through drawers and wardrobes, helping himself to a pair of Cartier cufflinks before finding a gun in a hidden case.
The gun in question won’t ultimately disobey Chekhov’s rule, though when and how it’ll come into play is the unknown that keeps the film ticking through a surprisingly sparse middle stretch.
It’s from this point that “Windfall” reveals itself not as a standard-issue home invasion thriller, but as a flintier, more passive-aggressive study of class warfare, in which ostensible victims become calculating oppressors and vice versa — while the murky power dynamics between these three white occupants are thrown into perspective when the couple’s Mexican gardener inadvertently enters the fray.
So often cast as a figure of gentle squareness, Plemons’ mild-mannered intelligence as a performer is here cleverly repurposed as douchey complacency; Segel’s retiring screen presence, on the other hand, gains a glint of twice-burned disappointment and nothing-to-lose drive.
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