Review of All the Money in the World (2017) by Steve G — 24 Dec 2017

SPACEY'D OUT - My Review of ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (3 Stars).

Love him or hate him, at 80 years old, Ridley Scott just churns out movie after movie as if he were still a young turk with something to prove. Then we have Christopher Plummer, who, at 88 years old, has famously replaced Kevin Spacey as billionaire J. Paul Getty, and shot his many scenes in 9 days just a few weeks before the movie's release date. Although he fully commits to his complex character, and Scott certainly knows how to tell this page turner of a story, I'm afraid we're more apt to remember the behind-the-scenes machinations more than we will the film itself. It's the meta movie experience taken to an historic new level, and for that alone, I recommend it, despite it being no more than just a pretty good film.

Written by David Scarpa, whose sole prior screenwriting credit was the pretty terrible 2008 remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and based on the book by John Pearson, the film plays a little fast and loose with the true story of the 1973 kidnapping of Getty's teenage grandson, John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation) from a street in Rome. His mother, Abigail Harris (Michelle Williams), divorced from the Getty scion, spends the bulk of the movie trying to get the senior Getty to pony up the ransom money. Notoriously tight with his money, Getty refused to pay, fearing it would open the door to further kidnappings of his other grandchildren. Despite this, he enlists an advisor, Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg) to help find the boy and perhaps negotiate a better deal. Needless to say, things do not go as planned, none of which I'll spoil here.

I love high stakes suspense thrillers, and this story certainly falls within that genre, but it's slightly inert. Without the fictionalized story elements, this would have been a big snoozefest. Luckily Scott does keep things clipping along. Wahlberg seems a little out of his depth, but he's an appropriately functional character. Williams perfectly captures the real Harris' WASPy, Katherine Hepburn-esque Mid Atlantic clipped speech patterns. As a concerned mother who just may be a step ahead of the senior Getty, she excels even without a surplus of showy scenes. In fact, most of the film feels fairly low key and intimate. When we're not following her in her attempts to save her son, we're right there in the cell with the young man as he builds relationships with his fairly inept captors. Romain Duris stands out as Cinquanta, who develops a layered, complicated rapport with Getty III. With the exception of Plummer, it's perhaps the most interesting dynamic in the film.

But then there's Plummer, and he's sensational. It's tough making this Big Bad into anything sympathetic, and he's not, but the film does a really good job of letting us understand his warped point of view. I'm willing to bet that Spacey did a fantastic job too, but Plummer doesn't need prosthetics and he has no problem conveying the isolation and worldview of a person his age. It's smart, captivating and he gets all of the best lines in the film. In fact, the rest of the script feels fairly cursory. It's filled with ample "and then" moments, enough to keep you wondering how it'll turn out, but its also pretty perfunctory. I did enjoy that it's ultimately an origin story, about what I won't share, but when the pieces fall into place at the end, it's pretty satisfying stuff.

I also enjoyed the emerging feminist storyline, something we've seen tin a similar way with Meryl Streep's character in THE POST. Williams' character may outwardly read as a meek woman, but her scrappy smarts comes to the fore to win the audience over. It's not the richest role, but it's inspiring nonetheless.

Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who has worked on many of Ridley's films, fills the screen with an appropriately hazy, hippie glow throughout I believed the time period without it feeling forced. I wish editor Claire Simpson (PLATOON) had been able to convince Scott to trim the film, because it's slack at times, but this is polished, high quality filmmaking. Had the original version been released, and had Spacey's personal life not scuttled everything, this would have been a solid but unremarkable movie. Spacey would probably gotten an Oscar nomination, but that's about it from an awards standpoint.

Now, Plummer will very likely get a nomination, and he deserves it on performance quality alone, but his amazing last minute efforts outshine even his creative accomplishments. ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD ends up still being solid, but this new incarnation is remarkable, just not particularly for what's on the screen, but for how it got there.