All the Money in the World

Seen at the Studio Cinema, Dunoon

Cecil says: The kidnapping of John Paul Getty's grandson happened when I was just 12 years old and in my stark view of the world at the time, I probably just saw it as a young rich kid in a rough country a long way away and a stingy family that made matters worse by not paying the ransom.

Of course, real life is much more complex than that, and the saga portrayed in All the Money in the World shows the different levels of psychology going on both within the Getty clan and among the gangsters involved.

The strange thing for us, though, was that the cinema in Dunoon had left the preview for this film on the footage to be screened before this film, so we got a fairly lengthy extract of the film which made us wonder if we had walked into the wrong room. Even more interesting was that the preview still featured Kevin Spacey in the role of Getty himself, even though the film itself has become a talking point for he fact that Spacey was air-brushed out after the scandals against his name, and Christopher Plummer took on the Getty role in the final version.

Plummer (Christopher - rather than the other unrelated actor Plummer who played the grandson) was actually magnificent, and it's a credit to him that he played the role so well at such short notice.

Getty may have been a pretty despicable character, but for me the more alarming aspect was the portrayal of 1970s Italy, particularly in the south, where it must have been hard to know who you could trust, and I can remember a politician called Aldo Moro being kidnapped and his body ending up in the boot of a car.

The film dragged on a bit longer than it maybe should have, but otherwise was a good watch. I can't say I identified with anyone portrayed, mind you, and was at no point actually moved, though I had to turn away when the rather graphic scene was shown of young Getty getting his ear cut off...

I can't help wondering how good Spacey might have been, but then having seen Plummer at his best, I can't help also wondering why he wasn't cast in the role in the first place.

***.5

Bea says:  An interesting story which I knew nothing about before seeing the film (I was a toddler when the story would have been in the news).  However the questions the film brought up for me were in a way much more interesting than the film itself - firstly, based on that unexpected preview was this actually the film that had edited Spacey out (I had heard that there was one that had done so)?  And secondly, what happened to Paul Getty after that highly traumatic kidnapping episode at the vulnerable age of 16?  With alcohol and drug abuse in the family, did he turn to those in order to cope?

Well, the answer to both questions is yes.  Ridley Scott re-shot all of Spacey's scenes in a very short period of time; with Mark Wahlberg allegedly doing better out of that financially than Michelle Williams, according to the internet.  And Paul Getty - already a drug user prior to the kidnapping, a fact rather glossed over in the film - did develop a major problem with drugs and alcohol after the kidnapping, and followed a rather hippy and arthouse 1970s.lifestyle, if again the internet is to be  believed.  Such a major problem in fact that he experienced a stroke following an overdose in the 1980s, with life changing consequences.

The film is good - it is well-written, well-shot, and well-directed as I would have expected from Ridley Scott.  It is perhaps a little overlong; I did want to cut to the chase about 3/4 of the way through and see the resolution of the kidnapping and what happened after - this was brief actually and prompted my research into the life of Paul Getty.

Plummer was a surprisingly inspired choice and was excellent, as were Wahlberg and Williams.  They had a lot to work with and did so with understated flair.

***.5