All the Money in the World (2017)

Jack and I really liked this telling of the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty's teenage grandson and its aftermath. Their dysfunctional family, especially the strong personalities of Getty Senior and his daughter-in-law Abigail make a compelling story, well-told after replacing Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer as the old miser, a fitting follow-up to Plummer's Scrooge in The Man Who Invented Christmas. That's not to imply that either of us has seen any of the Spacey footage other than in an early trailer (here are the two trailers back to back). Spacey's accusers (for sexual harassment, etc.) stepped forward at the end of October and, about a week later, Sony and the filmmakers decided to oust him with the movie's December 22 release looming. The reshoots took eight days to film 22 scenes, cost $10 million, and involved Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg having to return to Rome during the Thanksgiving holiday of 2017. Apparently Wahlberg had lost weight for his next role and I remember thinking he looked extra skinny but I didn't notice changes from scene to scene. On another note, to play 80 year old Getty, Plummer at 88 didn't need all the prosthetic makeup that Spacey did at 58.

Plummer has been nominated for a Golden Globe (so far) but bigger kudos go to Williams (just seen in The Greatest Showman and also Golden Globe nominated for this one) for her tightly wound Gail. Charlie Plummer (no relation) is now 18 and played one of Nucky Thompson's nephews in eight episodes of Boardwalk Empire, among other credits, and is good as 16 year old Paul, and so is Romain Duris (last blogged for the genial French boss in Populaire) as the main kidnapper. Wahlberg (after I wrote about him in 2 Guns we saw his a cameo in the Entourage movie) is fine as the agent helping Gail.

Veteran director Ridley Scott (most recently in these pages for helming The Martian) keeps the energy high, working from a script by David Scarpa (his third in 16 years), who adapted the 2015 book Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty by John Pearson.

Dariusz Wolski (shot The Mexican (2001), several Pirates of the Carribbeans, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Alice in Wonderland, The Rum Diary, Prometheus, The Martian, The Walk, and more) provides beautiful cinematography of exotic locales, sumptuous interiors, and an opening sequence styled after Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), which also took place in Rome.

I'm streaming the music by music Daniel Pemberton (last scored Steve Jobs) from a spotify playlist as I type and it's tense and evocative. Seven songs are listed on imdb, the most important of which are Time of the Season by The Zombies, The Rolling Stones' Wild Horses, and a cover of James Brown's It's a Man's Man's Man's World in Italian.

Here's a sad article about the real Paul, the kidnap victim. Another book on the topic, Uncommon Youth: The Gilded Life and Tragic Times of J. Paul Getty III, by Charles Fox, was published in 2013 and is the source for an FX mini-series, Trust, set to be released any day now.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences aren't paying much ransom to see this, averaging 77 and 73% respectively. We thought it was worth the price of admission.