All The Money In The World

Synopsis: The story of the 1973 kidnapping of 16-year-old John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) and the desperate attempt by his devoted mother, Gail (Michelle Williams), to convince his billionaire grandfather J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) to pay the $17 million ransom.

Probably the most memorable thing about Ridley’s Scott’s latest film is going to be that all Kevin Spacey’s scenes were re-shot (to the tune of $10m) following sexual harassment and abuse allegations against him a mere month before the film’s theatrical release date with 88 year Christopher Plummer who had originally been considered for the part (as had Jack Nicholson) replacing him. Ironically, Plummer (the elder that is, who is no relation to his younger namesake Charlie Plummer, what were the odds!) is arguably the best thing about the film (Scott has said that he will never release the Spacey footage, so we may never know what might have been) which, although manifesting the director’s top drawer film-making skills,is an unrelentingly lugubrious affair.

A prime contributant to the gloom is the funereal cinematography by Dariusz Wolski who has been Scott’s D.O.P. of choice since Prometheus (2012). Shooting contre-jour with the characters often in darkened rooms and only lit from behind with natural light a kind of visual pall hangs over the film. This, and Scott’s intentionally obscurantist mise en scène, means that particularly in the case of Charlie Plummer’s hostage and Romain Duris’s bandit, Cinquanta, we barely see their faces throughout the length of the film.  Which leaves the race mainly to the three leads. Plummer, Williams and Wahlberg as Getty’s head of security, Fletcher Chase.  Here, although we are told that the film is based on a true story, All the Money in the World which was adapted from a book by John Pearson feels very much like a standard Hollywood thriller, particularly in it’s somewhat muddled closing stages in which Gail, Fletcher, the banditti and the caribinieri all converge on a dimly-lit (of course) Calabrian hamlet so that Cinquanta can save the day. If that happened in real life I’ll eat my hat.

Athough Wahlberg is a strange choice to play a security chief, as we keep expecting him to do something heroic, Scott keeps proceedings subdued if not downright maudlin, as he chooses to focus as much on Getty’s soul-destroying miserliness as the  grandson’s terrifying ordeal and his mother’s desperate attempts to save her son. In other words, All The Money In The World is no bag of laughs, Getty’s taste for Scrooge-like observations on the venality of humankind aside. There’s not even any relief from the glumness in 1970’s retro production design, an opening quotation from La Dolce Vita (1960) and a throwaway reference to the Rolling Stones’ infamous dalliance in Morocco in the early ‘70s notwithstanding.

The result is, as we would expect with Scott, a film that impresses in terms of artistic integrity, one in which Plummer shines as Getty and Williams is, as ever, solid in her role as his beleaguered daughter-in-law. It is also one which is too formulaic in scripting to feel like real-life drama, too downcast to appeal to a thrill-seeking audience.  Those who can recall what a big deal the kidnapping was in the world media of the day (the paparazzi are shown here in full hyena rapacity) will find the film of interest as a trip down memory lane but everyone else maybe a tad underwhelmed.

FYI:  Patty Hearst, grand-daughter of another scion of American money,,William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped the following year by a group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. The incident is explored in the documentary Guerrilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst (2004). 

 

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