Netflix’s old-school thriller Windfall ponders how nice it would be to rob Mark Zuckerberg

polygon.com:

There are three characters in Windfall, and none of them have names: a wealthy tech CEO played by Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog), his wife, played by Lily Collins (Emily in Paris), and the man who robs them, played by Jason Segel (The Muppets). They weren’t supposed to meet — at the start of the film, the thief is alone in the couple’s empty villa. it’s only when the couple changes their plans and arrive to find him in their home that the film’s tense, 90-minute negotiation kicks off. In the ensuing one-act play, the real hostage isn’t a person, it’s the idea of the meritocracy, as Windfall slowly becomes a class-rage thriller about holding the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world prisoner.

The latest film from director Charlie McDowell (The One I Love), now streaming on Netflix, is a Hitchcockian throwback, an exercise in restrained, clear filmmaking and the tension that arises when you put three people and a gun in a room together. Each character arrives onscreen and reveals a little about themselves, even though they’re trying not to. The more time they spend together, the more they reveal, even when it’s bad for them. They can’t help being who they are.

Filmed with wide shots and long takes, Windfall feels like a play, even though it doesn’t ditching the pleasures of cinema. Its single set — the villa and its surrounding orange grove — is lovingly portrayed with symmetrical compositions and gold-tinged colors. The film’s score is full of reedy woodwinds that take listeners through peaks and valleys as the power dynamics shift between the trio, whose performances are just loud enough to bring them firmly out the range of “subtle,” but not so much that they become outright cartoonish.

Plemons is a delight as “the