All the Money in the World (2017)

Ridley Scott is a masterful director. Even when his films are mediocre he finds a way to make the stunning. All the Money in the World had the potential to be something fairly standard and he made it beautiful and compelling and powerful. The script reads like a typical ripped-from-the-headlines procedural, but Scott's eye and deft handling make it something more.

He paints a very ugly portrait of money and wealth. The story keeps returning to the evil nature of money, and his camera keeps finding ways to make it, and all it's corollary paraphernalia (art, luxury items, vehicles) seem cold, classless, depraved. The hunt for money, and hoarding of it, the desperation for it. Scott takes it all and makes it painful to watch.

Scott famously reshot much of the film (much more than I had believed) so that he could replace disgraced actor Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer. The reshoots are seemless, again speaking to Scott's proficiency. And after seeing Plummer take on this role, it's hard to imagine anyone else in it. He nails it. His John Paul Getty is a true villain, but not a caricature. He is decisively humanly evil. He is the kind of evil that lives and breathes, is not a cartoon twirling a mustache. He is the natural product of capitalism and greed. And he, like a tragic greek hero, falls at his own hand.

Casting Plummer turns out to be another masterstroke of Scott's. He has put together a very watchable potboiler, beautifully filmed, and gripping. And he gives us enough to think about that the movie sticks with us.

All the Money in the World
Starring: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Whalberg, Romian Duris, Charlie Plummer
Director: Ridley Scott
Writer: David Scarpa