Post by StevePulaski on Dec 28, 2017 15:45:16 GMT -5
All the Money in the World (2017)
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Christopher Plummer is J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World.
Rating: ★★★
It's 1973. Oil tycoon J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) has amassed a fortune north of $1 billion, roughly making him the richest man in the world. His existence is a largely reclusive one outside of closed-door meetings and private trips to purchase some of the finest, most expensive art in the world — a hobby that has provided him with untold riches in valuables. It's a life focused around the power of a name in addition to material items, which he claims never disappoint him like human beings; in contrast, they are exactly how they appear.
Getty's simple life of riches is thrown a bit of a curveball, however, when his 16-year-old grandson Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation) is kidnapped in Rome by a group of criminals. The kidnappers demand Paul's mother, Gail (Michelle Williams), give them a ransom of $17 million, but since her divorce from Paul's father and Getty's son (Andrew Buchan), she has been living off of very little riches; all she has is the custody of Paul per the arrangement. Getty is reluctant even to meet with Gail, fending her and the media off by repeatedly declining to pay the ransom or any amount of money. Paul, as a result, suffers at the hands of his kidnappers, who employ extreme and violent methods, including starvation and mutilation, in hopes that the eldest Getty will crack.
But he remains firm. He asks former CIA operative Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), his right-hand negotiator in business deals, to ease Gail's concerns by actively investigating the case to assure Paul is released. Both Fletcher and Gail wind up in frequent contact with Cinquanta (Romain Duris), one of the kidnappers who goes rogue in order to spare a few revealing pieces of information in order to keep them in the loop about Paul. While the ransom is negotiated, Getty remains an enigma to the press and his family, as he turns a blind-eye on his grandchild.
At its core, Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World is about two empires and how they're maintained and how they conduct business when they are being exploited. The first and most obvious is the Getty empire, built off of the age-old American idea of "striking rich" with oil and living off the exorbitant wealth that spills out of the industry like a dirty geyser. Getty could easily pay the requested $17 million ransom, but he consistently refuses. If you know the story already, you'll know that his "final offer" is pitiful and self-interested. Although she was once family, Gail, the character the film focuses on the most, is the one going up against Getty's unforeseen wealth. She wants her son back, but he, along with the rest of his family, is seen as an accessory in the eyes of Getty; not unlike the paintings and statues he hoards. In order to try and convince the selfish codger to at least play ball with these heinous individuals, she has to be disruptive and "think like a Getty" so she can get her son back.
Meanwhile, Cinquanta is going against his own empire, an element the film downplays. Cinquanta sneaks off to a payphone every chance he gets to provide Gail and Chase with updates regarding Paul's condition and informing them of the kidnappers' next move. He stalls when he can, and even tries to reason with Paul in some scenes, though his comforting tactics are facile enough still to be seen as threats by his fellow men. The empire he's rebelling against could bring about his death if he isn't careful, but there is a shred of compassion he harbors from hearing the fear in Gail's voice that seems to motivate him to do something good for a change. In order to preserve his own fortune, Getty's response to the turmoil brought on his family and Paul is simple — do nothing and do not give into the demands of terrorists. The kidnappers' response is to keep their promises of torturing Paul until the money is in their possession. It's a staring contest between two parties that can't afford to blink.
Scott's film is free of the flash and the concept-heavy weight that deprived many of his previous films from embracing the craft of their work. Scott so often nails the setups and richness of the environments he chooses to capture, but he doesn't deliver on the details the way you'd like (something that's been a great hindrance in his more recent science-fiction endeavors). By keeping things hyperfocused on the exchanges between characters and never losing sight of the stakes, mainly for the Getty family, he and writer David Scarpa make a sleek, involving thriller with a detectable pulse. Buoying their work is the ubiquitous presence of great performances, with Michelle Williams still managing to rise above her supporting cast and commit to an exhaustively emotional one. Williams is at the center of most great scenes in the film, including an infuriating boardroom negotiation with Getty that turns her former father-in-law into the one holding someone hostage.
Then there's the elephant in the room in the form of Christopher Plummer, who fits right in the film as the eldest Getty as if he was Scott's first casting choice — because he was. With Kevin Spacey's sexual abuse allegations costing him the supporting performance in the film, Plummer takes the reign and commands so well, you wouldn't know he and the rest of the cast were operating on borrowed time. Although he's only in the film for roughly 15 minutes total, the role's briefness allows his lines to carry more weight and his appearances on-screen to bring forth an added dimension, and those are two attributes that Plummer can naturally bring to a role. The fact that Scarpa's screenplay fits the 88-year-old actor's skillset already tells you, beyond any hot-take piece written in light of Spacey being ousted, that he is not only a good fit but the right fit — well worth the $10 million increase in production that came with the last minute reshoots.
All the Money in the World carries the weight necessary to bring the stakes of this story to life, and the way it illustrates the Getty empire as one that shows how it was built even though it doesn't is a testament to the strength of writer/director collaboration. The film is intense even when nothing in the conventional sense of the world is taking place; conversations and negotiations are made harrowing thanks how many great people are on-screen at once. Everyone speculated that Scott's desire to rush the film into reshoots was in order to get the film out so it could qualify for the forthcoming 90th Academy Awards, and while that may be true, it was also because Scott knew what a good film he had on his hands; a film he didn't want to go out to pasture.
NOTE: My review of All the Money in the World on my radio-show "Sleepless with Steve" on WONC 89.1FM:
Starring: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, and Charlie Plummer. Directed by: Ridley Scott.