In 1973, John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) was kidnapped and held for ransom. When his grandfather, the world's richest man John Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), refused to pay, it fell to Paul's mother Abigail (Michelle Williams) and Getty's hatchet man Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg) to get her son back.
This movie was not on my radar until November, when original cast member Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual assault. In an un-precendented move, Ridley Scott declared that he was re-casting Spacey with Christopher Plummer AND that he would have the film finished by the film's release date in late December.
Movies with unusual production problems have always fascinated me. There is something incredibly arresting about watching a team of filmmakers struggle to bring a film to the screen. Recent examples include Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassuss (which coincidentally starred Plummer as the title character), or 2013's World War Z, where the filmmakers ended up re-shooting almost half of the movie.
Christopher Plummer fits in perfectly - there is one shot where the seams show, but other than that you would never guess that he was a late replacement who was added less than a month before the movie's release.
Plummer is one of those actors who never quite disappears into a role - he makes recognisable choices in terms of the way he uses his body and voice. He has an affinity for playing amoral shits, and Getty is right in his wheelhouse. Unlike the performer he replaced, Plummer is able to leaven his characters with a sense of humour and charm in a way that allows him to remain just outside of a viewer's sympathies (think of General Chang in Star Trek 6 or his elderly patriarch in the Dragon Tattoo remake). He gives Getty just enough pathos that you can understand why people could overlook his complete ruthlessness and self-regard.
It also helps that Plummer is closer to the age of the character he is playing. Besides verisimilitude, it also fits in with the bleakness of the mise-en-scene. There is something almost vulture-like about Plummer's profile, and almost cadaverous about his face in general, that adds to the sense of Getty as a purely selfish creature, drawing sustenance from the world around him.
Plummer is such a perfect fit for this movie that by the climax it is hard to imagine that another performer was in his place.
It also helps that Plummer is closer to the age of the character he is playing. Besides verisimilitude, it also fits in with the bleakness of the mise-en-scene. There is something almost vulture-like about Plummer's profile, and almost cadaverous about his face in general, that adds to the sense of Getty as a purely selfish creature, drawing sustenance from the world around him.
Plummer is such a perfect fit for this movie that by the climax it is hard to imagine that another performer was in his place.
While Plummer was the draw, Michelle Williams is the real standout of the movie. Williams has been terrific in almost everything she has done for years now, and I am embarrassed that I forgot she was in it.
Mark Wahlberg is fine as Getty's hatchet man, although I did not quite buy his character turn in the third act. Wahlberg is not quite old enough to give the role the gravitas and cynicism that the script intends. For most of the runtime, he seemed to fit in, but when it came to the character's biggest emotional shifts, he fails to convince.
Due to the compressed time scale - and the logistical issues involved - All the Money in the World is a remarkable case study in Scott's skills as a filmmaker. When left to his own devices, he can be a sloppy story-teller (see Prometheus or Robin Hood for recent examples). Scott is not a creator in the traditional sense - he is a terrific interpreter, using his background as an art director and a designer to build worlds around his characters that feel like extensions of whatever his film is about: think of hellish future-scapes of Blade Runner or the lonely conman's sterile home in the underrated Matchstick Men.
All The Money In The World is all about the price of greed. Though he is present in less than half of the picture, Plummer's John Paul Getty is the centre of the film. The film's focus is his single-minded focus on accumulating wealth, building an empire and a dynasty, and the way his family are dragged into his schemes.
Darius Wolski's sharp, cool photography is a major asset - even before Paul is kidnapped, the Gettys' world is dominated by the patriarch's miserly ways. It always feels like the vitality has been sucked out of the image.
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