Gold Brick (now on Netflix) is a small-time crime-caper comedy that wouldn’t exist without the ’90s. Of course, NOTHING would exist if the ’90s hadn’t existed, because that’s the way time itself functions, but what I mean is, the reverberations of work by filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Danny Boyle and Guy Ritchie are still being felt in 2023. There’s one small difference, though – Gold Brick director Jeremie Rozan, instead of making a movie that’s essentially about itself and its twists, gives it an anti-capitalist slant that feels rather, how do you say … French. Now let’s see if Rozan’s thematic variation freshens up a familiar style.
GOLD BRICK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Chartres is a real city in central France about an hour-and-a-half outside Paris. The Breuils are a fictional family that’s pretty much the aristocracy in this fictional version of Chartres, although “aristocracy” has a different implication in capitalist society, fictional or otherwise – the Breuils own and run a company that packages and distributes luxury perfumes, and has been doing so long enough to produce a generation of failson heirs who know nothing but a life of privilege. Again, fiction. But at the same time so very much like nonfiction.
This whole scenario really grinds Sauveur’s (Raphael Quenard) gears. He’s our guy, this Sauveur, a working-class fellow who speaks to us in moderately clever voiceover narration and is an adult who’s probably too old to still be living with his parents, but there he is. His disgust has been brewing for years; as the son of a server at the local ritzy restaurant, he watched the Breuils dine on Michelin-star food and tip poorly. Then he and his best pal Scania (Igor Gotesman) grew up and started their own two-man/two-moped courier business only to be forced out of business by, who else, the Breuil corp. And then, insult to injury: Saveur really needed a job and the only place that would hire Saveur was, who else, the Breuils.
So there sits Saveur, in the warehouse, on an inspection line, seething as he watches products he’ll never be able to afford glide by, earning a few pennies working beneath a corrupt supervisor who skims his cut off the top of his employees’ meager bonus pay. But there’s enough idle-brain time on the job for an ethically ambiguous guy like Saveur to light-bulb up a side gig. Here’s what happens: Old Man Breuil kicks the bucket, so his grossly underqualified son Patrick (Antoine Gouy) takes over as CEO, and in celebration, all the employees are given a bottle of fancy-ass perfume as a gift. Saveur doesn’t want this shit so he posts it online and sells it for 50 Euro in, like, 12 seconds. Hmm.
So. Saveur starts hiding a bottle or four in the trash and smuggling them out of the building with Scania’s help, and when internet sales are deemed too conspicuous, he starts feeding the goods to black-market dudes who sell stolen iPhones at flea markets. Meanwhile, Saveur manages to charm Virginie (Agathe Rousselle), the HR manager who’s passed over for a promotion by the nepo baby in charge – the same nepo baby whose wife, for reasons best not spoiled here (even though you can probably figure it out easily), wants him to sell the company to Nougarolis (Gregoire Colin), owner of a chain of discount retailers. Crucially, Virginie is privy to insider info, namely, that the company’s automated inventory scanner doesn’t account for 2.5 million Euro worth of perfume, so she and Saveur hatch a scheme to steal about 2.4999999 million Euro worth of perfume, a situation that has several moving parts but still seems pretty easy, until it isn’t, of course. And so it becomes a situation that’s ripe for all kinds of amusing twists, which is pretty much the reason it exists in the first place.
Photo: Netflix
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Many stylistic traces of Trainspotting, Pulp Fiction and Snatch here, with a few Coen Bros.-esque petty-thief-isms for good measure.
Performance Worth Watching: Quenard has a Young Viggo Mortensen charismatic swagger to him that’s reasonably appealing – and could have been better exploited with a stronger script.
Memorable Dialogue: This Saveur voiceover detailing his change in sales and distribution methods is very much steeped in a 21st-century message: “That’s how I replaced the internet with Titou and Raoul. You have to admit, there’s nothing better than buying local.”
Sex and Skin: A couple of brief mostly non-nude sex scenes (I think we see man-butt in the dim lighting).
Our Take: Gold Brick is just fine, but I can’t conjure up any more enthusiasm for it than that. It’s a lean (95 minutes), enjoyable downsized caper that’s sort of a working-man’s version of Ocean’s 11 with its share of winking Guy Ritchie-style montages, a staying-a-step-ahead-of-the-other-guy plot and a handful of colorful characters. Granted, the montages could be snappier, the plot could be more amusingly convoluted and the characters could be more memorable. The movie has the feel of a filmmaker finding their footing, not taking too many risks and coloring within the genre lines.
Rozan’s apparent goal is to play it safe and create a generally acceptable movie that inspires a chuckle or three while making a broad statement against mid-to-late-era capitalism. It’s always easier to get behind a thief who takes from people who have more than enough and then some; it’s always maddening to realize that big businesses have a margin of error that could render dozens of families flush, or at least comfortable, if CEOs and their fellow upper-crusties gave a single iota of a crap about any of it. Not that Gold Brick stirs too much of that passion; Saveur’s mischievous streak is more milquetoast than fiery, so his story doesn’t boast much in the way of suspense or high-stakes drama. Rozan keeps the proceedings light, but not quite insubstantial, landing in the nether-zone that’s functional to stave off rainy-day boredom.
Our Call: Gold Brick is never unlikable, and although movies need to be more than that to stand out among the streaming era’s very very crowded crowd, it’s a watchable-enough throwback. So STREAM IT, but keep your expectations modest.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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