Sir Richard “Greedy” McCreadie [Steve Coogan] is sketched as a billionaire fashion mogul whose public bravado and celebrity circle mask a murky empire built on forceful business moves and ethical compromises. The film moves in a zigzag of time, opening after a disastrous appearance at a government inquiry into financial and ethical abuses in fashion, then turning back to how this man rose from privilege to power. Hired to ghostwrite his memoirs, the journalist Nick [David Mitchell] begins a meticulous dive into McCreadie’s background, hoping to craft a sparkling self-portrait while questioning what really fuels the man’s wealth. The narration repeatedly slips into the past, pulling us through the late 1970s and 1980s to map a remarkable ascent: a rebellious, outcast student in an unnamed British public school becomes a shrewd operator in the high-street fashion world, a rise that is as much about image management as it is about ruthless calculation.
In the earliest chapters, the film foregrounds McCreadie’s formative years and the people who shape him. A few crucial voices from the cast appear in flashbacks as the smoothed edges of his legend begin to crack. A young Richard McCreadie [Jamie Blackley] surfaces in the memories of his school days, a figure both defiant and restless, hinting at the appetite for control that will later dominate his business. A separate thread follows the rougher beginnings of Eric Weeks, a younger figure who crosses McCreadie’s path and hints at alliances made in those formative years [Enzo Cilenti]. As the present unspools, we learn that the wealth he amasses rests on more than savvy branding: it relies on sweatshops in Southeast Asia, aggressive tax practices, and asset stripping that undersell the lives of many who help keep his empire running.
The present-day centerpiece is McCreadie’s 60th birthday party, a Gladiator-themed spectacle set on the island of Mykonos. The intention is simple and ostentatious: a moment of relaxation for a man who has spent decades orchestrating public spectacle around his personal legend. Yet the party is entangled in problems from the start. The arena set piece is poorly built because it depends on undocumented immigrant labor, and the resident lion—strainfully restrained and tragically passive—becomes a symbol of the broader, darker machinery at work behind the celebration. The guest list—star power colliding with a world-weary public—shows cracks as some celebrities distance themselves from McCreadie, exhausted by the scandal shadowing his name. Nearby, Syrian refugees have established a makeshift camp on the beach, a stark counterpoint to the gilded chaos inside the celebration.
The film also follows McCreadie’s tangled family web. His ex-wife Samantha [Isla Fisher], who once ran the family’s public face as CEO, still carries a complicated pull over him even as he has remarried Naomi, a much younger trophy wife [Sophie Cookson]. Their daughter Lily, who stars in a reality-TV show with her boyfriend Fabian, lives under the same roof, creating a domestic theater of ambition, publicity, and pressure. His son Finn [Asa Butterfield], a restless and conflicted young man, lurches toward a more dangerous path, marked by an Oedipal impulse to usurp his father’s throne and a growing appetite for self-destruction. The film uses these family textures to underscore the way power distorts relationships, exposing fissures that money alone cannot smooth over.
As Nick works on the memoir, he wrestles with a difficult moral assignment: how to present McCreadie’s public persona without erasing the moral cost of his business strategies. A budding friendship forms between Nick and Amanda, one of McCreadie’s assistants who is morally unsettled by her employer’s cruelty and the human cost behind the wealth. [Isla Fisher] appears here as Samantha, the ex-wife whose presence keeps surfacing in Nick’s negotiations with truth, while Naomi’s glamorous veneer complicates his readings of McCreadie’s personal life. The personal and the political collide as Nick learns that McCreadie’s world demands workers wear Roman slave outfits as part of the party’s “theatricality”—a revelation that intensifies Nick’s ethical conflict. The narrative’s weight rests on the burden of portraying a man who has won celebrity friends at the cost of real human lives.
The night deepens with mischief and danger. McCreadie’s plan exploits a cluster of vulnerable workers: he uses a three-card monte trick to coerce local refugees into labor, paralogizing their tool and loyalty with spectacle. In parallel, Finn pilfers cocaine from Naomi and laces the lion’s food, muddling lines between decadence and danger. When Samantha rejects his advances, McCreadie wanders into the arena in a drunken haze, where the lion’s cage becomes a stage for a violent, cataclysmic reckoning. Amanda, moving with a pulse of impulsive courage, releases the beast, and the animal mauls McCreadie to death in a drug-fueled frenzy. Nick witnesses the moment and helps Amanda escape, a quiet act of conscience amid the chaos.
In the aftermath, the mood shifts to reverent propaganda. McCreadie’s death becomes a catalyst for a flood of flattering eulogies as Nick’s project evolves into a sanitized, hagiographic biography designed to preserve the family business. Finn steps into the maelstrom, taking over the reins of the enterprise, and it is suggested—and perhaps feared—that he will continue to wield power with the same duplicitous dexterity as his father. Amanda’s decision to conceal her role in McCreadie’s death is presented as morally ambiguous, echoing the earlier tragedy that claimed her mother’s life in a sweatshop fire: she resumes work in a Leicester sweatshop, tying the present to the past’s relentless cycles of exploitation. The closing credits broaden the lens, offering viewers a stark, factual reflection on exploitation and inequality within the fashion industry.
Throughout, the film maintains a tightly wound, morally complex tone, inviting audiences to weigh glamor against harm while watching a tumultuous life unravel on screen. The non-linear structure, the cutaways to the school days and early ambitions, and the stark contrasts between the Mykonos splendor and the refugees’ hardship combine to deliver a pointed meditation on power, money, and accountability. The result is a provocative, multi-layered portrait that stays faithful to its core events while expanding them into a broader conversation about wealth, ethics, and the human cost of high fashion.
