24 Lies a Second: A Cameo Disappearance

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A Cameo Disappearance

A couple of months ago I was out and about squiring a beautiful young lady around town (stand down, it's not what you think) when we found ourselves in the balcony of the cinema about to watch Murder on the Orient Express. After I had issued the usual instruction for her to behave herself in the dark, we found ourselves watching the first trailer for Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World, prominently featuring Kevin Spacey in a key role. 'That,' I predicted, 'is going to have problems,' for the initial allegations of misconduct against Spacey were already in general circulation.

The very next day I switched on my laptop to discover that reshoots were already in progress, and that Spacey's performance was being excised from the film and replaced by one from Christopher Plummer – just one more element in a career which is enjoying a virtually Christopher Lee-esque Indian Summer. I suppose that in the end this is a very shrewd decision on the part of Scott and the other producers – they get to look like they're taking a stand against abusive behaviour, there's no risk of the film being boycotted by outraged activists, and it is another source of publicity for the film, which is always welcome, after all. (Yes, I know, I'm a cynical old beast.)

Having said that, I wonder if Plummer is also under retainer to film new versions of Spacey's scenes from American Beauty? Or is that more in Ben Affleck's line nowadays? It's the logical next step, surely, and the technology is very nearly there. Who's going to replace Spacey in The Usual Suspects? Or Seven? Or Superman Returns? I must confess that this updated version of damnatio memoriae (for this is surely really what we're on the verge of) leaves me a little uneasy. I can't help thinking that in the end this is all still really just about the bottom line.

On the other hand, this is a very appropriate sentiment for a film like All the Money in the World, a retelling of the true story of the Getty kidnapping case of 1973, something so jam packed with grotesque and garish twists that I'm rather surprised it's never been the subject of a high-profile movie before.

The movie doesn't hang about and opens with the kidnapping in Rome of Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer – no relation), sixteen-year-old grandson of oil tycoon John Paul Getty (Plummer, currently at least). At this point in history, Getty Senior was not just the richest man in the world, but the richest man in the history of the world, famously single-minded in his pursuit of wealth and quite staggeringly tight-fisted – the movie suggests he washed his own socks in hotels to avoid paying the laundry, and installed a payphone in his home so his guests could make personal calls while visiting him. (He also appears to have believed himself to be the reincarnation of the Emperor Hadrian.) Paul Jr's mother Abigail (Michelle Williams) goes to her father-in-law for the ransom money the kidnappers are demanding, expecting him – as you would – to be sympathetic to the plight of his favourite grandchild, especially given he has – wait for it – all the money in the world.

But no. Getty refuses to pay – it's not quite a case of it being not the money but the principle, as the principle involved is his never giving any money away if he can help it. Paying Paul Jr's ransom will just encourage people to go about kidnapping his other thirteen grandchildren and making inroads into his personal fortune. No cash will be forthcoming. All he can offer are the services of his security operative Fletcher Chase (Marky Mark Wahlberg), whom he instructs to investigate the case and retrieve Paul Jr intact, if possible, with the minimum possible outlay of funds…

As I say, what follows is a fascinating and at times barely credible tale, which initially seems like a race to the bottom between the kidnappers and the Italian police as they compete to be the most inept and cack-handed. That said, I found a rather queasy sense of tension persisted, because there was one thing I did know about the Getty kidnapping – the criminals' threat to return the boy to his family in instalments, via the postal service. What I suppose we must call the film's Reservoir Dogs moment duly arrives, and is possibly not quite as grisly as it feels, but it's still certainly not one for the squeamish.

Then again, there's a sense in which the film is all about a certain kind of brutality, that of people who believe that every single thing has a price tag on it (the insights into the deeply dysfunctional Getty coterie suggest it's also saying something about how having too much money really screws you up). Principally these are Getty himself and the kidnappers, both of whom have very strong ideas about what Paul Jr's freedom is worth. Caught in the middle is Abigail Getty, whose problems mainly arise from the fact that nobody believes that a member of the world's richest family doesn't have access to any funds. Williams is very good in the role, which still feels a little bit underwritten – the same could really be said of Wahlberg, who gets a nice moment of moral outrage near the end but mostly just stands around looking stern. Also caught in the middle and making a rather good impression is Romain Duris as a kidnapper with a conscience, who almost becomes Paul Jr's protector against the more brutal parties who become involved.

All this said, however, the person most likely to come away from All the Money in the World with a gong is Christopher Plummer. It is, I suspect, a source of considerable relief to Ridley Scott that most of the scenes featuring Getty take place indoors with a handful of other characters, thus keeping the cost of replacing them down (in the film's only big location sequence featuring the character, Spacey apparently still appears in the wide shot) – the fact that Getty plays a relatively minor role in the story has also helped them out. I have seen reports that Plummer really contributes not much more than an extended cameo, but it certainly doesn't feel that way: he dominates the movie, even though he is absent from the screen for quite long stretches as the story unfolds.

The kidnappers remain a fairly anonymous bunch, Duris' character excepted, and the movie definitely reserves its most severe approbation for Getty himself, for the tycoon is depicted as nothing less than an icy, ruthless monster – 'evil' is not an overstatement. Some of his manoeuvres towards the end of the story are quite breathtaking in their calculating selfishness. Of course, what we're seeing here is a bunch of very rich Hollywood producers asserting how awful rich people can be, but the script and Plummer's performance are both good enough to make you forget about this while you're watching it.

Long-term readers may recall that I'm not an unconditional fan of Ridley Scott's work, and while I have generally warmed up to his more recent films, he's still quite capable of underwhelming me. All the Money in the World, however, is as effective and slick as the best of his films. It's very much the Hollywood version of history – the chronology of events is outrageously tweaked to serve the story – and, I suspect, the depiction of Italy is not likely to fill the Italian Tourist Board with delight, but this is a very engaging and well-made film. I'm not sure it says anything profound about wealth or values, but it's still a classy piece of entertainment.

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