‘Coup!’ Reviews: Film “is wonderfully assured in its boldness and swagger, and has the feel of far more seasoned and experienced filmmakers, reverberating with the echoes of everyone from Joseph Losey to Paul Thomas Anderson.”

        On August 2, 2024, Greenwich Entertainment releases ‘Coup!’, which has earned predominantly positive reviews, holding fresh at 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the film, a family’s mysterious new chef encourages the staff to turn on their employers after a plague occurs. Can the family survive? The ensemble cast includes Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon, Skye P. Marshall, Faran Tahir, Fisher Stevens, and Kristine Nielsen. But what did the critics say?

Carmen Paddock of Movies We Texted About praises the film, stating, “A breezy romp that comes in just under 100 minutes, Coup! entertains without offering much new on the dynamics of a pandemic society, where some lives are treated with more care than others. “Eat the rich” has never been a bigger joke.”

Christian Blauvelt of indieWire was less impressed, stating, “With “Coup!” so reluctant to own anything, it’s hard to imagine many viewers are going to buy what it has to say.” Concluding, “Politically muddled at best, something Ron DeSantis would happily introduce at CPAC at worst, this populist satire from directors Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman is an Adam McKay-lite class-war confection looking to have it both ways. Its “eat the rich” message is certainly strong enough for those with an extremely niche grievance: Those who, three years later, want to get in zingers at the Chris Cuomo types who fled cities for their country mansions while still acting like they were doing something to fight Covid on the front lines. But its thumb is invariably on the scale for a right-wing view, as much as Stark and Schuman have said that they feel the politics of “Coup!” reflect more those of the person watching it than what’s in the film itself.”

Guy Lodge of Variety notes, “Magnussen, meanwhile, is still possessed of those frostily handsome features that casting directors are loath to consider for heroic leads — and duly plays both “Coup!’s” villain and its patsy, as hoity-toity national newspaper columnist Jay Horton, whose performatively progressive politics are somewhat at odds with his vast inherited fortune.” Adding, “The ensuing alpha-male face-off between master and rebel is drawn in broad, enjoyably cartoonish strokes: In this case, both men have an impressive mustache to twirl. But if “Coup!” is unsubtle, its outcome is never exactly predictable, while its politics are intriguingly elusive. Horton’s slimy champagne socialism may be a straightforward satirical target, but Monk turns out to be a pretty self-serving man of the people; one way or another, as Mrs. Tidwell bitterly notes, the servant class can never emerge triumphant. Viewers seeking to map the film’s pandemic portrayal onto recent events, meanwhile, won’t find any unambiguously sympathetic stance between Horton’s hypocritical public interest and Monk’s hint of anti-lockdown individualism.”

Image Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Erin Free of FILMINK writes, “American independent cinema has an exciting new dual voice in Joseph Schuman & Austin Stark, whose first collaboration is the exhilarating satire Coup!, a scathing, no-holds-barred take-down of both the madness that surged out of the Covid pandemic, and the societal structures that allowed it to rage out of control. Prior to this cracking work, prolific indie producer Austin Stark had two uneven but highly topical directorial efforts to his credit in 2015’s The Runner and 2021’s The God Committee. His vision appears to have crystalised in his partnership with Joseph Schuman, who has his first credit here. Coup! is wonderfully assured in its boldness and swagger, and has the feel of far more seasoned and experienced filmmakers, reverberating with the echoes of everyone from Joseph Losey to Paul Thomas Anderson.”

Mark Jackson of Epoch Times says, “Coup!" is a breezy period satire substituting the Spanish Flu for COVID and showing how a pandemic can create a window of opportunity to usher in communism.”