DVD
All The Money In The World (15A) is the story of a disappearance. No, not the way the movie’s original star Kevin Spacey was replaced with Christopher Plummer (right). We’re talking about the 1973 kidnap of John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer – no relation to his onscreen grandfather).
You know the story in all its ear-slicing detail, because the papers couldn’t get enough of it. So though John Paul’s gramps is the richest man alive, he didn’t get like that by handing his money out to Italian hoods. Instead, he has his own personal investigator, Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), try to track down the kidnappers. Desperate to help is the boy’s mother, Gail (Michelle Williams, very effective).
The picture wants to be an analysis of the heartlessness of wealth but the drama never sparks. The best reason to watch is Charlie Plummer. His angelic blond ringlets and his wide, zonked-out eyes speak to an innocence beneath his poorlittle-rich-kid life of debauchery.
Otherwise, the movie feels hollow – a news report rather than a drama freighted with emotion.