Melding a morality play with a glossy soap, Italy’s “Human Capital” is a fairly successful balance of entertainment and ideas.

Based on an American novel set in Connecticut, this adaptation is set in Milan, where a conflict between grubby social climbers and imperious hedge-fund plutocrats leads to collateral damage to innocents. Fabrizio Bentivoglio plays the small businessman who turns a chance tennis date with a financier (Fabrizio Gifuni) into an opportunity to gamble everything on the latter’s hedge fund, while the two men’s adult children (Matilde Gioli, Guglielmo Pinelli) prove a mismatch as a couple.

The film’s contempt for both the rich and the upper middle class is palpable, its characters largely stereotypes and its ending a tortured way to push a point about the victimization of the poor. But the “Pulp Fiction” style storytelling (periodically the film backs up and revisits the same time period from a different character’s point of view) is skillfully done, keeping you guessing until several story lines click smoothly into place.