For the most part, we collectively don’t like the One Percent. Watching the little guy take down a peg on in pop culture is always a fun thing. One fun one that comes to mind is the Oceans Eleven series, especially the first one where the heroes take on a casino. Heavily borrowing from that theme, writer/director TJ Noel-Sullivan takes his aim at the healthcare industry in his directorial debut with Midas.
Ricky (Laquan Copeland) recently had to drop out of Harvard when his mother Mia’s (Jo Ann Cleghorne) terminal illness forced her to be terminated from her job at “Midas” Healthcare, the healthcare company she worked at. He is forced to work with his mother and his sister Destiny (Kendyl Grace Davis) for their home cooking service to try to do whatever they can to help out their mother and her medical bills.
After a day of soliciting services (a cleaver way where he operates as a food delivery driver, but puts a flyer for his mother’s business on the delivery bag), he’s exhausted, but after meeting up with his friends Victor (Federico Parra) and Sunita (Preet Kaur) they invite him to a fancy party for recent Harvard grads. Sunita just got a job working at the mailroom for Midas Healthcare and Victor is about to go across the country to work for Facebook, they know this could be a fun time for Ricky, so after at first refusing to go, Ricky attends the party. Although severely underdressed (he wears a Harvard t-shirt and jeans while everyone else is wearing formal wear), Ricky strikes a rapport with Claire (Lucy Powers), a classmate of Victor and the daughter of Midas Healthcare’s CEO Gregory (Bob Gallagher). As it’s clear Ricky and Claire are attracted to each other, she inadvertently introduces Ricky to her father at the party.
Ricky does the only thing he can with a quick second to think, he lies to Gregory and tells him that he IS a recent Harvard graduate and not a dropout. It seems at first in Midas that Ricky’s lies are almost comically easy to tell, but he continues to wing it and gets better and better. By the end of the conversation with Greg, he tells Ricky to come by his office on Monday to see about any job opportunities. Man, it really pays just to BS your way by simply mentioning Harvard!
On Monday, Ricky’s interview is all but a formality, and by the end of the conversation, he naps a job as a claims approver, working under Gregory’s nephew Frank (Erik Bloomquist), who just oozes “I’m the boss’ relative” in his persona. Like almost any college grad when they start working, Ricky knows nothing about how to do his job, this is also a clever way for Midas to show exactly how processing claims works in the healthcare industry. It also displays how the executives care more about denying claims than approving them as Ricky gets a stern talking-to for approving “too many” claims. We know who our bad guy is for sure!
After Ricky accidentally approves the claim for a prescription for a person who is already dead, he does some homework about how the IT systems work at this company and how to activate and deactivate patient accounts in Midas’ computer systems. This causes Ricky to come up with a brilliant idea: what if he reactivated his mother’s account, which would then allow him to approve her getting a surgery she desperately needs, since her chemo isn’t working? Ricky realizes if he can do this, he’ll have to do it smartly, and he’ll need help.
Ricky enlists his friends Sunita and Victor into the potential heist. Sunita already works in the mailroom and knows all the ins and outs of how Midas Healthcare works. Meanwhile, Victor is an IT wiz (he is going to work for Facebook after all). The three of them put together a plan to override the computer systems (setting up birthday celebrations, pickpocketing, and plenty of other fun heist stuff) so that they can allow Mia to get the surgery she needs, as well as pocket a little bit (more like a lot) of dirty healthcare money for their own needs.
In Midas, the tension racks up as they have to do heist after heist, and the stakes and actions they have to take get bigger and bigger. You think they are just about to get caught, and then a convenient thing happens that allows them to get out unscathed. In addition to pulling off this caper, Ricky somehow keeps failing upwards and learns more about Midas Healthcare, even a secret program they have, which is highly unethical. Do they work together for their small goals, or do they want to take down the whole company? Even the boss’ daughter hates the healthcare industry, so why not try and take them on?
Towards the end of Midas, the stakes become very high, and then the script takes a left turn. The twists and turns rely on an unreliable narrator who almost takes the easy way out as the finale finally unveils the whole heist from start to finish. It strains the suspension of disbelief a bit, but is still entertaining in its execution. Although the script is weak (especially at the end of the film), Midas succeeds in the charm of the actors, especially Laquan Copeland in a star-making role as he Walter White to Heisenberg’s himself from aimless college dropout to Danny Ocean within the film’s runtime. The supporting cast is also great, and you can’t help but want to punch the CEO and his nephew as they display everything we hate about the rich. Overall, Midas is a fun time, lets you root for the little guy, and continues to remind you we need a better option for healthcare in this country.
Midas is currently available in theaters.
