What do you do in a worst case scenario? For instance, a baker arrives at a wedding with a $5,000 cake that falls over thirty minutes before the reception is about to begin. Or, a concert promoter whose headliner cannot perform after selling out a venue. Even crazier yet, a film is about to be released worldwide and one of the lead actors has allegations of abuse against him. Do you still release the film, or do a re-shoot with another actor? For the first time in recent memory, this has become the case less than a month before release.
“All the Money in the World” is the new film directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, The Martian) with Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine, Manchester by the Sea), Mark Wahlberg (Ted, Boogie Nights), Charlie Plummer (King Jack, Lean on Pete), Christopher Plummer (The Insider, A Beautiful Mind), Andrew Buchan (The Nativity, Nowhere Boy), Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, Playing God), and Romain Duris (Heartbreaker, Ceasefire). Based on true events surrounding the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) in 197, the grandson of one of the world’s richest men and his namesake (Christopher Plummer). Paul is living with his mother Gail Harris (Williams) in Rome after the divorce of his mother and father John Paul Getty II (Buchan), who is living in Morocco living the life of a drug addict. Paul is kidnapped with a $17 million ransom, but Gail has no real money from the divorce settlement. Gail reaches out to Paul’s grandfather for help, but he refuses to pay the ransom, but instead has one of his best employees named Fletcher Chase (Wahlberg) to help with the kidnapping and ransom negotiations.
This film shows Italy and England’s countrysides very well, making a point to be very time period accurate in the sets and scenery. The acting is fine overall by the entire cast, but even though there have already been some Golden Globe nominations for it, I did not really see it. Wahlberg does fine as the former spy role and his accent fits the part, Williams does well with the emotional parts of her role that this film requires, and Christopher Plummer (replacing Kevin Spacey) was a good choice for the replacement for the rich English grandfather with his voice tone and mannerisms for the character he portrays.
My biggest complaint is that the film is over two hours long and there are parts that do drag. The strange thing here is that there are certain points in the film where I felt that they cut too much and other points where the story did not in-depth enough. Now to the big elephant in the room: it is no secret that they re-shot some of the film with Plummer, which I feel film may have suffered because of it. This could be what caused some of the gaps, but I would be interested to know for sure. No one really knows what the best answer is for what happened with the allegations, but maybe it was the wrong solution. I will still recommend this film due to a good base plot, the acting and being historically correct in general with the plot and the sets, but I will still recommend it as a Redbox rental.