ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (US - 2017) Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by David Scarpa. Cast: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, Timothy Hutton, Charlie Plummer, Marco Leonardi, Andrew Buchan, Stacy Martin, Giuseppe Bonifati, Andrea Piedimonte, Nicolas Vaporidis, Charlie Shotwell, Guglielmo Favilla, Clive Wood, Giulio Base, Riccardo de Torrebruna. (R, 132 mins) Regardless of how the film turned out, it's inevitable that ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, a chronicle of the 1973 kidnapping of 16-year-old oil heir Paul Getty, will be remembered most for its role in "#MeToo" phenomenon and the epidemic of sexual assault and misconduct allegations that rocked the entertainment industry in the fall of 2017, beginning with the downfall of Harvey Weinstein. Approximately six weeks before the Christmas release date, director Ridley Scott made the decision to remove Kevin Spacey from the completed film following numerous disturbing allegations against the Oscar-winning actor. Cast as billionaire J. Paul Getty and essaying the role under a ton of prosthetic makeup that rendered him unrecognizable, Spacey was already set as the focus of the film's big awards season push. As more accusers came forward detailing incidents with Spacey dating back to the 1980s, Scott feared that the growing scandal would only prove toxic and potentially lead to the shelving of the film and everyone's hard work being all for naught. In order to save the project, he then made the decision to cut all of Spacey's scenes and brought in Christopher Plummer--his original choice before distributor Sony pushed for Spacey--for some burning-the-midnight-oil reshoots that took place from November 20 to November 29, 2017. This decision also required stars Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg to rearrange their schedules in order to redo their Getty scenes with Plummer, and the stitches show only slightly: only in one shot does it look like Plummer's been composited into an existing scene, and in his new scenes with Plummer, Wahlberg is clearly wearing a wig and, perhaps in the middle of prepping for another role, looks noticeably thinner in the face. Late-in-the-game cast changes have happened before, for a variety of reasons: the eventually blacklisted Howard Da Silva starred in the completed 1951 western SLAUGHTER TRAIL before RKO ordered his scenes cut and reshot with Brian Donlevy after Da Silva was accused of communist leanings and refused to testify before HUAC; when Tyrone Power died 2/3 of the way through filming the 1959 Biblical epic SOLOMON AND SHEBA, his footage was scrapped and Yul Brynner was hired to reshoot all of his completed scenes. These are but two instances of quick decisions being made to save a film, but the time element makes ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD something noteworthy (and, it's worth mentioning, easier to pull off in the age of digital). The complete removal of a major star due to a scandal, so close to the release date that said scandal is still ongoing in real time as the film hits theaters is unprecedented. And for the most part, the legendary filmmaker--80 years old and showing no signs of slowing down--pulled it off.
Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa take some liberties with the facts for dramatic purposes, sometimes detrimentally so, but it's an overall engrossing saga of the ordeal of Paul Getty (Charlie Plummer, no relation to Christopher), who's abducted and held for ransom by a terrorist group in Rome. They demand $17 million, assuming a quick and easy payday since Paul's grandfather is oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the world. Getty can make $17 million on a good day, but he's also the most miserly man in the world, the kind of penny-pincher who has a pay phone installed in his house for guests to use, with a sign advising them to keep their calls brief. Everything is a deal to Getty and he never loses, and his first assumption is that Paul staged the kidnapping himself in order to extort money since Paul often joked about doing just that. Getty's also in no hurry to help his estranged daughter-in-law Gail Harris (Williams), who divorced his son John Paul Getty II (Andrew Buchan) several years earlier and received custody of Paul and their other three children. With Getty II now a borderline catatonic drug addict wiling away his days in Morocco, it's up to Gail to manage the negotiations with the kidnappers. She gets some assistance from ex-CIA agent and J. Paul Getty fix-it man Fletcher Chase (Wahlberg), who's been advised by the old man to retrieve his grandson and do it as cheaply as possible. Since Gail has no access to the Petty fortune--she agreed to take no cash settlement in the divorce in exchange for full custody of the kids--Paul is held captive for months due to Getty's unbending refusal to pay a single cent, and the boy is even sold to another group of kidnappers led by wealthy "investor" Mammoliti (Marco Leonardi), who eventually decides to send Paul's severed ear to a Rome newspaper in order to convince Getty that they're serious. And even then, the ruthless billionaire--who's in the midst of making the biggest profits of his life thanks to the oil crisis--only agrees to pay a significantly lesser sum once he and his lawyer Oswald Hinge (Timothy Hutton) finagle a way to make it tax-deductible.
Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty
Christopher Plummer as J. Paul Getty
Original poster art prior
to Spacey being cut from the film
As portrayed here by a sneering and subtly sinister Plummer, Getty is nothing short of a monster who would rather put his grandson at risk if the alternative is parting with any of his money (while the hostage negotiation is going on, he thinks nothing of dropping $1.5 million on painting). Spacey's removal from ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD is probably the best thing that could've happened: initial trailers showing the actor weighed down by unconvincing makeup would've ultimately been viewed as a distraction and Oscar-baiting stunt casting. By contrast, 88-year-old Plummer plays the 81-year-old Getty with no makeup, letting you see the condescension and the unscrupulous disregard for humanity come through in the decades visible on his face. He's perfectly cast and ultimately, the best thing in the movie. Young Charlie Plummer does some solid work as Paul, and his scenes with sympathetic kidnapper Cinquanta (Romain Duris) also provide some of the film's strongest moments. Wahlberg and Williams are less convincing--Wahlberg because he doesn't so much play Chase as much as he does a stock "Mark Wahlberg" character (the scene where he finally tells off Getty feels a little too "say hi to your mother for me"), and Williams because she's uncharacteristically mannered here, with actions and vocal inflections that too often sound like she's using the film to workshop a mid-career Katharine Hepburn impression. Scott's manipulation of the time element gets eye-rollingly melodramatic by the end, which crescendos into a ludicrous finale that has Getty dying at the very moment his grandson is rescued, which has no resemblance whatsoever to the reality where Getty died nearly three years later in 1976. Despite the occasional missteps, ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD gets a lot right, particularly the mood and feel of 1973 Italy, a tumultuous time that saw increased crime and Red Brigade-related terrorism take over the country. But really, the biggest reason to see it is for someone who wasn't even in it until about a month before its release. The ageless Christopher Plummer is a living legend, and on the shortest notice imaginable, created one of the most vivid and memorable characters of his long and storied career.
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (US - 2016) Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan. Cast; Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, Lucas Hedges, Matthew Broderick, Gretchen Mol, C.J. Wilson, Tate Donovan, Josh Hamilton, Kara Hayward, Anna Baryshnikov, Heather Burns, Tom Kemp, Kenneth Lonergan. (R, 137 mins) Acclaimed writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's pay-the-bills gigs have included scripting films like ANALYZE THIS and GANGS OF NEW YORK, but he's best known for his 2000 indie YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, which got Laura Linney an Oscar nomination and was the first big break for Mark Ruffalo. But then it all fell apart as Lonergan's follow-up, MARGARET, was shot in 2005 and languished on the shelf for six years, mired in editing issues and lawsuits. It finally got released on just 14 screens in 2011, and that was only after Lonergan mentor Martin Scorsese intervened and supervised an exactly 150-minute recut that met the distributor's demand of a 150-minute film that Lonergan refused to deliver. Lonergan was allowed to prepare his own 186-minute director's cut for the Blu-ray and while the film met with significant acclaim, he was subsequently viewed as everything from difficult at best to unstable at worst, and for a while, it appeared as though his career might be finished. Five years after the MARGARET debacle came to an end, and with the help of producer pal Matt Damon, Lonergan is back with MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, a distinctly Lonergan character piece that takes the complex family dynamics of YOU CAN COUNT ON ME and the gut-wrenching emotional trauma of MARGARET to make what's probably his defining auteur statement yet.
Turning in the sort of internalized, anguished performance whose power might not hit you right away, Casey Affleck stars as Lee Chandler, an apartment janitor and handyman in Quincy, just outside of Boston. He keeps to himself, drinks too much, isn't pleasant with tenants, and looks for fights at the neighborhood bar. He's going about his routine when he gets a call that his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler), who lives 90 minutes away in Manchester, has been hospitalized. Joe dies before Lee can get to the hospital, his heart finally just giving out after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure at an unusually young age a few years earlier. There's the usual affairs to get in order--Joe's business, his boat, and the burial, which can't take place until spring because it's the dead of winter and the ground is too frozen, forcing Joe's body to be kept in a hospital freezer until the ground begins to thaw--but Lee's primary concern is Joe's 16-year-old son Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Joe explicitly stated in his will that Lee is to become Patrick's guardian, a decision never discussed with Lee, who was under the impression that their uncle would raise Patrick if anything happened to Joe, but Joe changed the will when that uncle moved to Minnesota. With Patrick's mother, Joe's alcoholic ex-wife Elise (Gretchen Mol), out of the picture, Lee tries to get Joe's best friend George (C.J. Wilson) to take Patrick, but decides that he'll just have to move back to Quincy with him. This upsets Patrick, who has friends, two girlfriends, school, and sports in Manchester, along with his being the lead guitarist in a not-very-good band. The situation is forcing the closed-off Lee to take charge and confront actual feelings again, several years after his life fell apart in a tragic incident that was too much for his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams) to handle.
Lonergan reveals Lee's past in bits and pieces, flashing back to various incidents from Patrick's childhood, the early stages of Joe's diagnosis, and scenes depicting Lee's happily married life with Randi. What happened to Lee and Randi is operatically tragic, a bit of drunken absent-mindedness that changed the Chandler family's lives forever, and one that still causes the Manchester townies to speak of Lee in hushed tones when he returns for Joe's funeral, some old friends offering condolences, others wanting nothing to do with him. This incident is revealed in a long flashback that's almost too difficult to watch, but Lonergan belabors the point a little by blaring Albinioni's Adagio in G Minorso loud and so long that it actually starts to undermine the effectiveness. It's really the only misstep in an otherwise exemplary and profoundly, achingly moving film, anchored by powerful performances from Affleck and Hedges, as well as Williams, who only has a few scenes but makes every one count. Lonergan dives right into the action, but then lets things play out in natural, unaffected ways, allowing us to get to know everything we need to know about these characters, even the minor ones like Elise's second husband, played in a one-scene cameo by Lonergan regular Matthew Broderick. Affleck and Hedges beautifully portray the back-and-forth love and resentment between a broken man who just wants to be left alone and the nephew who used to look up to him and wants to be independent but needs his uncle more than he realizes. It's a raw and unflinching film but it's sprinkled with some surprisingly funny moments, whether it's Lee trying to grasp how Patrick can juggle two girlfriends or how the uncle and nephew find dark humor in a period of intense mourning (Patrick, inside Lee's freezing cold car: "Maybe we can just put my dad back here." Lee: "Shut the fuck up"). MARGARET was an ambitious but sometimes unwieldy mess that got away from him, but Lonergan has crafted his finest work yet with MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, one of 2016's best films.
Veteran Canadian actress Sarah Polley showed maturity beyond her years when she made her writing/directing debut at 28 with 2007's AWAY FROM HER, a sensitive and emotionally devastating look an at aging couple struggling to cope when the wife (Julie Christie) is diagnosed with Alzheimers. As an actress, Polley has always chosen smart and creative projects, even in the occasional instances when she stars in something commercial (1999's GO or the 2004 remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD). Dating back to her childhood, Polley has worked with many great filmmakers--Terry Gilliam, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, just to name a few--and she's learned from them. Her second feature, TAKE THIS WALTZ, is uneven and too frequently succumbs to quirkiness and occasionally feels "cute" to the point of annoyance. But it's a deliberate and clever misdirection and it enables the film to really sneak up on you in its much more effective second half. In a bohemian enclave in Toronto, travel writer Margot (Michelle Williams, who's very quietly become one of today's great actresses) and cookbook author Lou (a nice dramatic turn by Seth Rogen) have been married for five years and a sense of complacency has crept in. They have goofy rituals and talk to each other in funny voices and they seem more like close friends than a married couple. Entering the situation is Daniel (Luke Kirby), who Margot meets while on a research trip and it turns out he lives just a few doors down the street. They begin a flirtaceous but platonic relationship as Margot wrestles with the idea of the known/old (Lou) vs. the unknown/new (Daniel).
While Polley's script (and a lot of Williams' and Rogen's dialogue feels improvised) is frequently more quirky than it needs to be (Daniel works as a rickshaw driver?) and the dialogue in the early going too obviously prophetic (Margot on air travel: "I'm afraid of connections"), it eventually displays a level of honesty and complexity rarely seen in films like this. You ever notice in movies how, when men have affairs, they're selfish assholes, but when women have affairs, it's because they need to "find themselves"? Polley approaches it differently. Her characters are real (she takes a big risk by making Margot frequently obnoxious) and they're flawed. She and the film don't take sides, they don't make excuses, and they don't provide any easy answers. And when certain things are revealed, the characters respond like real people would respond (Rogen is especially good late in the film). TAKE THIS WALTZ can best be summed up by a line during a scene in a gym shower where Margot is listening to Lou's recovering alcoholic sister (Sarah Silverman, also good in a serious role) talk about the sense of boredom, the routine, and the lack of "new" in her own marriage, and an older woman overhears them and offers some simple words of experience and wisdom: "New things get old, too." (R, 116 mins)
SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE (US/Russia - 2012)
A lunkheaded but surprisingly entertaining "men on a mission" combat action film, the barely-released SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE gets off to a clunky and exposition-heavy start before finding its groove as a likably brainless second-string EXPENDABLES. For a while, it gets perilously close to being a subversively satirical commentary before backing up and focusing on blowing shit up. Maybe it's the overqualified cast that does a good job of selling it--and admittedly, it's a dumb movie--but I was surprised at how much I found myself enjoying it. In desperate need of cash, disgraced ex-Marine Christian Slater accepts a job with Soldiers of Fortune, a war-games resort company that caters to billionaires and assorted One-Percenters wishing to experience the thrill of warfare without the danger of actually being killed. With his fellow dishonorably discharged pal Freddy Rodriguez tagging along, Slater heads to Ukraine to whip his unlikely soldiers into shape: there's mining magnate Sean Bean, telecommunications giant James Cromwell, international arms dealer Ving Rhames, Wall Street hedge-fund dickwad Charlie Bewley, and spazzy video-game designer Dominic Monaghan. Essentially observers on a mercenary mission to Snake Island to topple a nefarious Russian colonel (Gennadi Vengerov), the rich fatcats are forced into battle when all of the experienced military guys except Slater are killed en route to the island. Of course, this is personal to Slater: the Russian's right-hand man is rogue CIA agent-turned-contractor Colm Meaney, who--wait for it--was the guy responsible for ruining Slater's military career.
SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE never takes itself seriously, and at times, it seems like it might cross the line into actual comedy. But even as a cliche-filled action film, it's a total guilty pleasure. Director Maxim Korostyshevsky does a good job making a low-budget film look a lot "bigger" than it really is. It's very nicely shot in some scenic Ukraine areas (a welcome change of pace from the dreary Bulgarian locations usually seen in this type of thing), there's some daring stunt work, convincing explosions (some CGI, some real), minimal shaky-cam, and a good mix of CGI blood with actual splattery squibs so as not to look completely cartoonish. There's nothing here you haven't seen before (sweeping aerial shot of the heroes walking a narrow path along the top of a mountain? Check! Sneering villain strutting into the room where the nabbed heroes are being held and gloating "Hello again, gentlemen..."? Check!), but the ensemble cast works very well together and they seem to be having a good time. Not a great or even a very good film by any means, but it's a lot of fun and accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, and definitely deserved more than a 50-screen dumping with no publicity at all. (R, 94 mins)
THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH (France/Poland - 2012)
This frustrating and impenetrable would-be thriller from acclaimed Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (MY SUMMER OF LOVE) establishes a certain degree of interest for a while but it doesn't take very long to conclude that it simply isn't going anywhere. Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) is an American novelist and literature prof who arrives in Paris and drops in unexpectedly on his estranged wife (Delphine Chuillot) and young daughter (Julie Papillon), in apparent disregard of a restraining order. Ricks has recently had a mental breakdown and may or may not have been hospitalized or imprisoned. He's also a bit of a clueless doof, as he falls asleep on a bus and wakes up to find his bags stolen. He gets a room at a seedy bar/flophouse run by the obviously shady Sezer (Samir Guesmi), who agrees to provide room and board if Ricks will spend his evenings watching a video monitor outside a drug den that he owns. Ricks foolishly gets involved with Sezer's Polish girlfriend Ania (Joanna Kulig) while at the same time seeing a mystery woman named Margit (Kristin Scott Thomas) who he meets at a literary gathering. A third-act twist merely confirms what was suspected all along, but it still doesn't really provide any answers, as the whole story may or may not even be happening. It's really quite dull and pointless, and the pieces of the puzzle probably aren't even meant to fit, which would be fine if it was a visually interesting work. Hawke is fine in the lead, and plays most of his role in French, but THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH isn't suspenseful, it isn't overtly stylish, and it's not erotic. It's the kind of ponderous snoozer that gives subtitled arthouse films a snobby rep. (R, 84 mins, also available on Netflix streaming)
