‘All the Money in the World’ can’t save it
Tymon Smith Good performances from Christopher Plummer and Michelle Williams can’t quite save Ridley Scott’s film, writes
Ridley Scott’s period thriller recounting the kidnapping of the grandson of billionaire oil tycoon J Paul Getty arrives with certain expectations that have little to do with the story of the film and everything to do with the scandals of Hollywood. Originally shot with Kevin Spacey playing Getty, the film faced a crisis in the wake of #MeToo allegations against the actor and Scott, with typical Northern English, gritted teeth bravado, announced he would reshoot all Spacey’s scenes — 22 — in nine days, replacing him with 87-year-old Christopher Plummer. It’s a tribute to Scott that he’s managed to extract a compelling and often suitably repulsive performance from Plummer as the Scrooge-like, parsimonious wealthiest man in the world.
LESS PANCAKE AND HAM
Plummer is closer in age to Getty and needs less pancake makeup than Spacey to make his appearance believable. His performance is also probably more understated than Spacey’s, who tends towards hamming it up and theatricality. But there are still a few problems with the final product. Within Scott’s overall and long career All the Money in the World is a disappointingly uneven dramatic thriller that fits with the director’s less successful and flatter works like Matchstick Men and Body of Lies.
It is shot mostly in dappled ’70s sepia, but begins with a black and white homage to Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. In these opening scenes a slightly stoned, open-mouthed John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation) roams through the bustling nightlife of Rome, taking in the sights and flirting with haggard prostitutes before he’s bundled into a van and disappears. Later that night his mother, Gail Harris (Michelle Williams), receives a call from a swarthy gangster named Cinquanta (Romain Duris), who demands a $17-million ransom. Gail tries to explain that she doesn’t have that kind of money but Cinquanta isn’t interested — after all, the boy’s grandfather “has all the money in the world”.
TAKING STOCK
So begins the months of tug-of-war between Gail and her former father-in-law, who didn’t become the world’s richest man by giving anything away. Getty refuses to pay, and justifies his decision by claiming that were he to pay a ransom for any of his 14 grandchildren he’d soon have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.
From his grand estate filled with priceless antiquities and paintings, Getty is far more interested in the stock prices he obsessively monitors on a ticker-tape machine than the welfare of his family.
His one concession to Gail is to assign Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), a former CIA operative now in charge of the tycoon’s security, to travel with her to Rome to attempt to retrieve Paul.
Initially Chase determines that the whole sordid affair is a hoax concocted by Paul and his mother to fleece Paul’s miserable, pennypinching grandfather. But as things take a gory turn, Chase becomes an ally in Gail’s desperate attempts to get Getty to open his chequebook and do the right thing.
Williams gives a committed and believable performance as the increasingly despairing mother. Duris’s Cinquanta is as sympathetic and humane as an appendageslicing Calabrian gangster could be.
The weakest link — as in all films where he’s not playing a good ol’ working-class Bostonian — is Wahlberg, who’s horribly out of his depth as Getty’s former spook in charge of negotiations. He walks around looking increasingly dazed and horribly confused. You can only imagine how much better much of the film might have played had Scott decided to replace Wahlberg too.
In the end, this is Plummer’s film and he gives a commanding performance as a man so chillingly obsessed by all that glitters that when the writers construct a fitting, Citizen Kane-like farewell for the old bastard, you can’t help but mutter: “Good riddance.”
Though Scott has achieved the seemingly impossible in terms of his goal of replacing Spacey, ultimately the film jumps too unevenly in and out of expositional flashbacks and doesn’t create enough maintained suspense or drama to keep all its different pieces satisfyingly together.
All the Money in the World is now on circuit.