All the Money in the World Reviews

Back in 2017, Ridley Scott pulled off the marketing stunt of the year. Indeed, just about a month before this movie was released, he decided to reshoot all the scenes involving Kevin Spacey, who had just been hit by a massive sex scandal, and replace him with Christopher Plummer. Even though Scott had been praised for this decision, in fact, it was only a win-win situation for him. Indeed, he actually never wanted Spacey for this role as he had been chosen/imposed by the studio and, on top of that, it was an unique opportunity to show to the rest of the world that only a great director like him could pull off such a stunt. Even for the studio, it was a good deal since the movie got much more media coverage than it would have received under normal circumstances. And, indeed, the whole thing looked great and it felt like Plummer had been involved from the very beginning. On top of that, he gave a very solid performance and it is hard to believe that Spacey would have done any better with tons of make-up and prosthetics. And, yet, if you put this stunt aside, was it really a great movie? Not really, I'm afraid. Basically, it was a typical effort from this director. I mean, it looked great, the material had a lot of potential but it still felt either rushed or lazy. For example, during the introduction, you get to meet John Paul Getty II and his happy family but, then, within a few minutes, he became a drug-addict living in Morocco. This character was just so poorly handled, without mentioning the fact that the guy was apparently actually much more involved in the negotiations with the kidnappers. Then, they made the mistake of focusing on one of the kidnappers. It was obviously made up but, above all, completely uninteresting and it was even worse that they chose Romain Duris, a French actor, to play this character. Another mystery was Mark Wahlberg's character. Seriously, what was the point of this character? At what point was he actually really helpful? I mean, to make us believe that he was the one who gave a heartfelt speech to John Paul Getty who would finally change his mind was just really ludicrous. Anyway, to conclude, I think I'm being rather generous with my rating here but it was an interesting story and Ridley Scott knows how to direct a good looking picture but there is no doubt that it could have been so much better.

The biggest problem with All the Money in the World is that its anchoring presence, that of billionaire J. Paul Getty, is just not interesting enough as presented here. He’s clearly meant to a figure of mythological proportions, and Christopher Plummer is valiantly trying to play him as such, but the rest of the film is lacking a certain something about it to really sell this idea. Perhaps its leftover messiness from having to quickly reshoot so much of it, or maybe it’s just that this was always a heavily manufactured affair with clear examples of artistic liberty taken with the material.

 

Then there’s the main problem of Mark Wahlberg. All the Money in the World is a three-legged beast that depends on the performances of all three main actors to work properly, and two of them are doing a great job. Wahlberg is a perfectly fine comedic actor, but he’s shown time and time again that he’s limited in dramatic roles. This feels outside of his range of emotive capabilities as his biggest choice to display seriousness is whether or not he removes his glasses. Michelle Williams and Plummer outgun him, and the delicate balancing act necessary for some scenes are thrown off by his stilted line readings and frowning serious face.

 

There’s also the problem of the repetitive nature of a large chunk of the film. We get so many false leads, hysteric crying phone calls, negotiations, and near misses that you can guess the exact structure of the next several scenes before they’ve even finished, or started. Things play out almost as caricatures, of icy wealth, of band of brothers criminals, of a ferocious mother, that you lose any real emotion or complexity to the narrative. All the Money in the World just becomes another handsomely made but inert Ridley Scott film, and we’ve been getting an awful lot of those lately.

Plummer is too old for a role that required much life. Maybe Scott too, because t¿here is a Citizen Kane with kidnappers transnational story wasted.