3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, dramatic intensity, violence and drug use
By Derrick Bang
This film’s Christmas Day release
couldn’t be more appropriate: Rarely has a real-world individual been depicted
in a manner so reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge.
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| Invitation to catastrophe: Gail (Michelle Williams) and her husband John (Andrew Buchan, right) assume that being embraced by his father, J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) will be the best possible thing for their family, and particularly for their eldest child Paul (Charlie Shotwell). How wrong they are... |
Although All the Money in the World draws its stomach-clenching suspense
from the uncertain fate endured by its young victim, director Ridley Scott’s
film gets most of its juice from Christopher Plummer’s mesmerizing portrayal of
billionaire J. Paul Getty: an avaricious, repugnant monster whose
breathtakingly awful behavior knows no bounds.
Indeed, each example of cruelty
is topped by one that’s much worse. We’re frequently inclined to believe that
scripter David Scarpa fabricated this or that jaw-droppingly ludicrous detail
... but no. Getty really was that stingy and parsimonious, particularly with
family members, and Plummer’s performance oozes heartless contempt. (How
artistically fitting that Plummer recently played Scrooge in The Man Who Invented Christmas.)
Scarpa’s script is drawn from the
relevant portion of John Pearson’s 1995 book, Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of
J. Paul Getty. One can’t help feeling that it ain’t easy to be wealthy
(although everybody would love to try).
I also can’t help wondering if
Scott, Scarpa and Plummer intend this performance as a thinly veiled indictment
of the similarly callous behavior currently emanating from the unfeeling
über-rich in Washington, D.C.
Plummer is so perfect — so contemptibly
vile — that it’s difficult to imagine anybody else in the role. And yet he was
a last-minute replacement for the publicly disgraced Kevin Spacey, who had
completed work on the film. Assuming Scott and Sony are willing to release that
footage, it’ll be fascinating to compare the two performances, once this drama
hits home video.
(Actually, 88-year-old Plummer
seems a better choice than 68-year-old Spacey, given that Getty was 81 when
these events went down.)
All the Money in the World concerns one of history’s most
unusual — and protracted — crimes: the 1973 kidnapping of Getty’s 16-year-old
grandson, John Paul Getty III, affectionately known as Paul. He endured half a
year of imprisonment, from mid-July through mid-December, while his captors’
demands encountered a brick wall of refusal from the old man.
