Oscar Week Film Review: All the Money in the World

The drama around All the Money in the World proves more interesting than the film, if I’m honest.

“We look like you, but we’re not like you”

Perhaps unfairly, All the Money in the World will be more famous for events around it rather than for the film itself. For at the heart of the #MeToo maelstrom, director Ridley Scott took the decision to remove and recast Kevin Spacey out of a major supporting role barely a month before it was due to open.

Christopher Plummer stepped into the shoes of John Paul Getty at the last minute, delivered in nine days of reshoots and has been rewarded with an Oscar nomination for his pains. The result though. is a rather uneven film in which his performance seems at odds with those around him.

Of course, this comes prejudged with the knowledge that reshoots happened. But the notes of vulnerability that he brings into his portrayal of the oil tycoon controversially remaining stand-offish when his grandson is kidnapped and held for random work against the revulsion he inspires in those around him (one presumes Spacey’s interpretation was far harsher).

Michelle Williams is excellent as Gail, the kidnappee’s mother (and can consider herself robbed for not garnering her own nomination), fighting through the scattered timeline of the storytelling to make an emotional connection that is elsewhere lacking. Again, you can’t help but be coloured by the strange contractual goings-on around reimbursements for the additional work. The less said about Mark Wahlberg the better.

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