By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Charlie Plummer, Romain Duris, Marco Leonardi, Ghassan Massoud, Kit Cranston, Maya Kelly and Timothy Hutton.
Rating: Excellent.
Academy Award Director Nominee Ridley Scott brings “All The Money In The World”, one of the movies that caused a lot of controversy before it´s release brought very interesting results.
Based on the novel “Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty” by John Pearson, it tells the story of young John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) the grandson of Oil Tycoon J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) is being kidnapped by an organized crime ring in Rome.
The kidnappers call John Paul´s mother Gail Harris (Michelle Williams) demanding a ransom of 17 million dollars or they will kill her son.
Gail comes to her former father in law for help on trying to convince him to pay the ransom. This is the story of one of the most influential men in American history and how he had to deal with a critical situation.
I consider “All The Money In The World” one of the most challenging movies that director Ridley Scott has ever done in his career due to the controversy that I mentioned before which involved Kevin Spacey, who originally played J. Paul Getty in the film but was replaced by Christopher Plummer, due Spacey´s sexual allegations which has been accused of.
Practically Scott had to shoot the scenes with Christopher Plummer as J. Paul Getty again and still had a December release. The movie took me out of surprise and I think it was a very interesting topic.
One of the things that made “All The Money in the World” a very good movie beside the performances was the screenplay written by David Scarpa. He adapted John Pearson´s book in a very good way and I loved the fact the movie takes you from the origins of J. Paul Getty.
The used of flashbacks in this movie, that were not to many were very well used and told us what we needed to know about the main characters which was very important and worked.
Christopher Plummer´s performance as J. Paul Getty was outstanding and he gave as usual a remarkable performance.
I liked how the film played with the stakes at all moments and Ridley Scott is a real master in this type of situations. This is one of his trademarks in most of his films and he did again in a brilliant way.
I saw in here one of the most unexpected twists in the film and did work. The movie did took me by surprise at all moments and it´s the reason why it had to be long.
The movie by moments did over explain some situations and scenes but it needed to be that way in order to understand the true nature of the characters.
Before I watched this film I didn´t knew to much about who J. Paul Getty was and I considered this an huge learning lesson and a good throwback to history.
The score composed by Daniel Pemberton is fantastic and engaging at all moments. I felt that it played a key role in the film since it had a huge meaning to the whole film.
On the not so good side I felt that the movie was kind of predictable by moments, specially at the end of the film there were things that I knew there were coming. Still I was not bothered by that and I insist that the movie does work.
“All The Money In The World” is a must see movie, I highly recommend it for Ridley Scott´s directing, performances and pace of the film.