All the Money in the World Review

I found my trip to the ticket office with this movie rather amusing. The nice lady at the ticket booth asked me what I wanted and I replied that I wanted all the money in the world. That would be nice, right? I could put all that money in my bank account and become a full-time blogger! Unfortunately the box office lady didn't honor my request of giving me all the money in the world. Instead she simply printed off a movie ticket, so I begrudgingly accepted that as a consolation prize and went into my screening since I had paid $5 for that ticket. This is a movie where the story behind the making of the movie is probably more interesting than the movie itself. In fact, that's exactly why I went and saw it as soon as could. Not because I was super interested in the story they were telling, but because I was interested to see how this turned out since they did extensive reshoots of this movie just a month before the movie was set to be released. Most studios would choose to postpone the movie for at least a few months if they were to do something like that last minute. But this team choose to be extremely ambitious instead. This risk could've easily blown up in their face, but the most surprising aspect of this is that they somehow managed to end up with a pretty dang good film!

Before I dive into the details of this production and tell you why the final product is so impressive with all things considered, let's quickly talk about what this movie is actually about. "All the Money in the World" tells the true story of J. Paul Getty, who founded in the Getty Oil Company in 1942 and in 1957 was named the richest living American. In 1966, the Guinness Book of World Records named him as the world's richest private citizen. In 1996, he was ranked as the 67th richest American to ever live. At the time of his death, he was worth approximately $6 billion, which is equivalent to $18 billion in today's money. So yeah, he was a very rich man. However, the movie isn't a biopic of his whole life. We specifically hone in on one major event that happened in 1973. The kidnapping of Getty's grandson, John Paul Getty III. Paul III was abducted in Italy at the age of 16 and held at a ransom of $17 million for his return, a sum that would've been easy for Getty to pay, but yet the billionaire refused, putting Paul III's mother, the ex-daughter-in-law of Getty, in quite the horrible predicament because she wants nothing to do with her ex-husband's father or his fortune because he's not such a nice man. But now she has to deal with the kidnapping of her son.

The thing that makes this so fascinating is that Getty is played by Christopher Plummer. Not Kevin Spacey. Apparently director Ridley Scott wanted Plummer to play the role, but Spacey was cast instead because he's more of a household name. But as has been very well publicized, Spacey's career is probably now over with his reputation permanently damaged. And rightfully so. Beginning in October of 2017, upwards of 15-20 people have come forward with sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations against Spacey stemming as early as the 1980's and as recent as on set of his hit series "House of Cards." Essentially we are learning that he is a horrible human being and a sexual predator who has previously been able to get away with anything just because he's a famous Hollywood actor. But no longer will he be able to get away with these things because in 2017 we put our foot down against sexual harassment and sexual assault. The "Me Too" movement has emboldened millions of men and women across the country to stand up against these injustices and now 2017 has become the time where we've started to separate the wheat from the tares, so to speak, ending the careers of sexual predators such as Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Andy Signore and more.

I absolutely love this movement. The idea that these monsters in the form of famous Hollywood figures can get away with anything is horrific. It's about time that the world stood up against these people and replaced them with good, wholesome human beings who actually deserve the spotlight. And if you haven't heard the speech from Oprah at the Globes on Sunday, you need to go listen to it right now. She hits an absolute grand slam as she drives this whole thing home. When these allegations came out against Spacey, he was dropped from everything, which left the filmmakers of "All the Money in the World" in a predicament because Spacey was the star of the movie. With all of these allegations, no one was going to see this movie. So on November 8, reshoots of the film were commissioned with Plummer being recast as Getty. All the scenes involving Getty were to be reshot with Plummer instead of Spacey. This was crazy because the movie was scheduled to have its premier at the AFI Fest on November 16 with its nationwide theatrical debut on December 25. It's showing at the AFI Fest was cancelled and reshoots began on November 20, ending on November 29. All the re-editing and other post production was finished in time for its December 25 release.

That timeline is insane. Often post-production can take months and it should because that means the filmmakers have enough time to get the proper cut of the film done. No one would've blamed these people at all if they had decided to postpone the movie until sometime next year so that they could get it right. Doing major reshoots this late in production while keeping your original release date could severely impact the quality of your film. Thus when I went into this movie, I went in with a very critical, investigative eye to see if I could see a difference between the original scenes and the reshoots and I was absolutely blown away because the movie is seamless. In fact, I'm confident that people who don't follow movie news as much as I do and thus never heard about this recasting will go into this movie and come out with no clues at all that a different man was initially cast in the lead role. Whenever you have any sort of production complications, the eventual goal is to make audiences believe that those issues never occurred with your final product. Now I don't think we should make a habit out of reshooting movies this late and keeping the same release date, but the fact that they did it and pulled off a nearly perfect final product is extremely impressive.

This also makes this movie a very timely movie. With all the sexual assault allegations and the "Me Too" movement fresh on people's minds, the fact that this movie got rid of Spacey and replaced him with Plummer while still making the awards season deadline means that this is the perfect movie for these awards ceremonies to back as this stands as a strong statement that we will not tolerate sexual misconduct in the workplace, regardless of how popular or famous you are. Thus Plummer should be a shoe-in to at least get nominated for best supporting actor in these awards races and rightfully has been. The Oscar nominations come out soon and I hope we hear his name. On that note, you might give a counterargument that you should be nominated for your acting performance and not just because you did a good thing. And that's an excellent point. So to that point, it's also impressive that Plummer absolutely owns this role. It seems like he was the perfect person to play J. Paul Getty as he does excellent at portraying this complex old man whose fame and riches has completely drowned him out and destroyed him. I can't imagine anyone else in this role. Even if none of this drama happened, I still think he'd be worthy of a nomination.

What about the rest of the movie, though? Well, as I said earlier, the story behind the making of this movie is more interesting than the movie itself, which is why I've spent most of my time on the former rather than the latter. We have on our hands a pretty basic kidnapping movie that has you on the edge of your seat at times, but never quite hits the level of intensity that it's building up to, thus leaving me relaxing in my seat more than I probably should've been in a movie of this type. But I do like the themes presented in this movie as Plummer's Getty is a very rich man, yet not a very happy man. It's very true that riches can destroy a human being if they don't keep themselves in check. In contrast, Michelle Williams, who also does a great job in this movie, plays a character who has every opportunity to inherit the riches from her father-in-law, but specifically chooses to only take what she needs to survive as she rejects the lavish lifestyle of her father-in-law that also ends up destroying her husband as well, causing the divorce. Through it all, she seems a lot happier and is able to make the more logical, reasonable decisions when this kidnapping situation comes about, thus teaching us that all the money in the world doesn't guarantee you'll live a happy life.

Overall, I give this movie a standing ovation in terms of how the filmmakers chose to handle the Kevin Spacey situation. Men and women who have been oppressed and shunned after being sexually harassed and assaulted (yes, it happens to men, too -- let's not forget that) deserve to be heard and believed. We also need to be careful of false accusations because it would be unfortunate for careers to be ruined after said person didn't actually do anything wrong, so there's a balance that needs to be had, but the balance has been skewed too far in the wrong direction for so long that many people have been scared to stand up for themselves when they have been mistreated and I'm glad that "All the Money in the World" stands as an example of filmmakers who made the right decision and refused to tolerate the actions of Kevin Spacey by removing him from their movie despite them only being weeks away from their release. I can't praise that enough. They may not make their $50 million budget back, but as this movie itself teaches, money isn't everything. If I'm being an honest critic, the movie itself isn't as intense or powerful as it could've been, but there's enough here for me to give it a good recommendation anyways. My grade for the movie is an 8/10.