Review: 'Coup!' is a dark class-warfare comedy set during a pandemic, with an uneven battle of wits and wills at the center

The darkly comic “Coup!” brings class warfare to the mansions of New York’s well-to-do, setting up a less-than-satisfying battle of wits between two mismatched opponents. 

In one corner is Floyd Monk (Peter Sarsgaard), a cook in 1918 New York who takes a job with a wealthy family, the Hortons, in a mansion on an island off the coast of Long Island. In the other corner is the Hortons’ patriarch, J.C. (Billy Magnussen), a muckraking newspaper writer stirring up the masses with his accounts of the Spanish flu epidemic and the panic in Manhattan — from the comfort of his family mansion, far away from the strife of the New York streets.

While J.C. writes diatribes against President Wilson and tells his wife, Julie (Sarah Gadon), about his political ambitions, Floyd begins a series of small acts of defiance against his bosses. J.C. bans alcohol for the servants, which Floyd disagrees with. And J.C. is a pacifist and a strict vegetarian — a stance that Floyd questions, particularly when pandemic panic makes getting produce in town impossible, and the only available food source is the plentiful deer on the property. 

At first, Floyd’s transgressions seem inconsequential, but over time, they feel to J.C. like a plot — possibly orchestrated by President Woodrow Wilson — to undermine him within the family. Julie, who likes Floyd’s attention to her play writing, wonders if J.C. is losing his marbles.

The writing-directing team of Joseph Schuman (directing his first movie) and Austin Stark depict this as a microcosmic power struggle of wealth vs. labor — with Floyd’s rebellions and the support he’s garnered from most of the kitchen staff going up against the money and empty fighting-for-the-people rhetoric of J.C. and his family.

The battle of wits is also a battle of acting superiority, and Sarsgaard — in a rare comic role for the usually morose actor — runs rings around poor Magnussen. But forming a rooting interest is difficult, because neither side offers a completely satisfactory outcome, and the one the movie chooses turns out to be the worst. 

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‘Coup!”

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 2, at the Megaplex Theatres at The District (South Jordan). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for sexual situations, some violence and language. Running time: 98 minutes.