All The Money In The World

 

(US, 2017) Director: Ridley Scott. Screenplay: David Scarpa, based on the book by John Pearson. Cast: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris.

Ridley Scott turns a true story into a thrilling bit of cinema, with Christopher Plummer filling in for the ejected Paul Spacey as billionaire J. Paul Getty, whose grandson was snatched off the streets in Rome in 1975 and held for a (huge) ransom. Plummer is magnificent as the center of the storm, whose dislike of caving to terrorists is equally by his disinterest in his children and grandkids (“He’s only one of 14 of them”). But it is Michelle Williams (Manchester By the Sea) who serves as the emotional engine of the action; as the kidnap victim’s mother, she is willing to do anything – from making deals with the Devil to standing up to her contemptuous father-in-law – to bring her son back home. 132 min
<em>”At 88, Plummer is at the top of his game. There hasn’t been such a lonely mogul in the movies since Orson Welles’s Charles Foster Kane expired with “Rosebud” on his lips.”</em> Peter Rainer, CS Monitor.com