A good movie

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.

7/10