All the Money in the World

It's a true story of course that in 1973, 16-year-old John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) aka Paul, grandson of the world's richest man John Paul Getty Snr was kidnapped in Rome by an organized crime gang. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of $17 million which the older Getty (Christopher Plummer) refused to pay because he really didn’t want to spend the money.

Instead it was left to Paul’s mother Gail Harris (Michelle Williams), ex-wife of John Paul Getty Jr (Andrew Buchan), to do all the battling and negotiating for her son’s release. She had gained custody of all Getty’s grandchildren when they divorced in exchange for not taking any of Getty’s precious money as alimony. However, this means that she has no money herself to pay the ransom.

Getty asks Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), an employee of his and part time thug, to somehow get Paul released, cheaply. 

Weeks go by without anything happening, aside from a burnt body turning up in a river which they initially think it is Paul but it isn’t. It’s one of the kidnappers who was killed by his colleagues after accidentally showing his face to Paul. 

The kidnappers then lose patience and sell Paul on to a different gang who reduce the ransom demand to $4 million which causes Getty Snr to finally agrees to contribute something but only $1 million. Which is the maximum amount that he can claim as tax deductible and that is on the condition that Gail gives up custody of all the children.

 

However with the random still $3 million short, the kidnappers cut off one of Paul’s ears. Only when this turns up in the post does Getty grudgingly, under pressure from Chase, agree to pay the full amount.

 

Gail and Chase take the money to Italy and attempt an exchange for Paul, but he has legged it as soon as he was freed. Then when the captors realize that Chase has also led the police to them, they too are hunting Paul. This time to kill him.

There is a happy ending of course. Paul is saved and the elder Getty dies leaves his wealth to his kids, not that any of it is in cash. It has all been invested in paintings, sculptures and the like. Most of which are now in the Getty Museum.

Rather impressively many scenes were quickly and cleverly reshot with Plummer after Kevin Spacey was removed from the role by the director Ridley Scott but only after shooting was complete. It is a credit to Scott and to Plummer that you really cannot tell. Plummer in fact is excellent throughout.

Meanwhile Wahlberg is an odd choice for his role and in a film where everyone else is pretending it really is 1973 the rather wooden Wahlberg seems to be playing himself. 2018 style. 

It’s an informative film but one that seems to have taken liberties for a more exciting plot and is quite unbelievable in places. Decent watch though.

Hodejegerne (Headhunters)

Time to brush up on my Norwegian. Again.

'Headhunters' or to give it its original title - ‘Hodejegerne’ is ostensibly a thriller based on a Jo Nesbø book produced by those Yellow Bird folk, the Dragon Tattoo people. Usually the book is a lot better than the film of the book. All I can say is; it must be some book.

Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) works as a corporate headhunter but his job clearly doesn’t pay well enough to keep his woman (Synnøve Macody Lund) in the style she's become accustomed to. For which he has our sympathy.

He’s worried she’ll leave him because he's short with an inferiority complex whereas she's tall, blonde and beautiful. Perhaps he has a point. So to make her ends meet, he has a side job as an art thief.

Also on the side, he has mistress Lotte (Julie Ølgaard), which doesn’t really make sense. Why resort to crime to keep the woman of your dreams and then have a mistress... but then little is simple in Headhunters.

He uses his job to ascertain whether potential job recruits own any decent works of art, whether they live alone, have a dog etc... then he burgles them, replacing their paintings with fakes. He is aided and abetted by Ove (Eivind Sander), a security expert with a taste for Russian prostitutes.

When Roger is introduced to Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a man who has allegedly an original Rubens hanging in his grandmother’s apartment, suddenly he has the ‘big one’, the one that will finance his trophy wife for good but this time he steals from the wrong guy. Greve turns out to be a psychopath, things get rapidly out of control from there on in and Roger finds out what it is to be headhunted himself.

He ends up fearing for his life but at first, he doesn't really know why. As the bodies mount up, he doesn't know whom he can trust and whom he can't. Nor can we.

The film is clever in that you start by seeing Roger one way but pretty soon your perception of him changes. Roger goes through a lot, a hell of a lot and ends up doing things he wouldn't ordinarily dream of doing, just to stay alive.

The film is full of surprises and at times leads us on a right merry dance. You think one thing but then you think something else. You start rooting for one guy and then end up rooting for another. It’s all done at great pace and with a rather dark, macabre sense of humour bubbling along just under the surface, including a rather shameless rehash of a scene from Slumdog Millionaire.

It would be impossible to spoil much more of the plot for you because there's so much of it and it gets increasingly more complex as the film goes on but it always remains plausible, just about. Just don’t dare blink.

See this before a Hollywood remake appears. Apparently Mark Wahlberg already has his hands on the script. Why bother? There’s no way on earth Hollywood could better this.

The Fighter

You can't say that Marky Mark isn't diverse. From the ‘Funky Bunch’ to Calvin Klein underwear to ‘Boogie Nights’ and an acting career. Now Mark Wahlberg is even producing films and in the case of ‘The Fighter’ both starring in them as well as producing.

‘The Fighter’ is actually based on a true story. It is the tale of ‘Irish’ Micky Ward (Wahlberg) a fighter trying to make a go of it in the ring. One of his coaches is his half-brother, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). Dicky was a boxer himself in the 1970’s and 80’s. His main claim to fame being his 1978 bout with Sugar Ray Leonard which made him somewhat of a local legend. Dicky still tells the tale of that fight, over and over again, where he knocked down Sugar Ray. Even though Sugar Ray may have tripped... and went on to win the fight.

Now years on, Eklund is being followed by a film crew, who he believes are making a documentary about his possible boxing comeback. In truth though, Dicky is now a shadow of his former self and the film crew are more interested in his drug addiction.

This habit makes Dicky an unreliable coach and he’s always late for training sessions. Micky’s manager would probably fire him; that is if his manager wasn’t his domineering mother Alice (Melissa Leo). Dicky and Alice organise all Micky’s fights for him but things have not gone well recently. Micky has become known simply as a stepping stone for other boxers on their way up to better fights.



The opening of the film is slightly annoying as we are introduced to the close knit but slightly dysfunctional family headed by the overbearing mother and with half a dozen or so even more annoying sisters. Once the film gets going though, it’s rather good.



After losing four consecutive bouts and being pushed, by Alice and Dicky because they all needed the money, into an unwinnable fight against a fighter from a higher weight division, Micky come to a realisation. He has tried to remain loyal to his family but it is costing him his career. They are holding him back and he knows it. If he wants to get anywhere in the boxing world, something needs to change.

When Micky hooks up with local barmaid Charlene (Amy Adams), she gives him the impetuous to do it and helps him pull free from his suffocating family. Which, of course, they don't thank her for. Adams is way out of her usual comfort zone in this film, this being a far more serious role than anything I’ve seen her do before and she does brilliantly.



When Dicky winds up in jail, both brothers eventually start to get their respective acts together. Dicky finally kicks the drug habit while Micky gets new management involved and starts boxing again. Mickey O'Keefe is now his sole coach. O'Keefe is a sergeant in the Police and in real life was the mentor of Micky Ward. O'Keefe plays himself, as in fact does Sugar Ray Leonard, who has a small part.

Micky moves up the ranks but still there in the background are his family, his brother still offering advice even from his prison cell. Then Micky gets a shot at the World Welterweight title against Shea Neary. Problem is, with Dicky now released from prison, can he reconcile his family with his girlfriend and his coach and get everyone on side for the biggest fight of his life?



Underneath it all Dicky turns out to be a nice guy, someone you'd actually want in your corner. Though, I’m still not sure about the mother. I didn't really know Melissa Leo before this. Her character is so annoying Leo must have done a really good job.



The cast are the real strength of this film, in which Bale is outstanding. It is much more than just a film about boxing and the main 'fighting’ take place not in the ring but outside it. Another good film, in a good year so far.

The Lovely Bones

‘The Lovely Bones’ is based on the best selling book by Alice Sebold.

The year is 1973 and on her home from school a young girl, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), is approached by her neighbour, George Harvey. He persuades her to enter an underground den he has built. Once she enters, he attacks her, kills her and then dismembers her body before bundling it into an old safe. Meanwhile, Susie's spirit goes up into her own personal afterlife, an 'in-between' state between life and death, which looks shockingly like Windows XP world. You know those garish green grass/blue sky images from the default Windows XP backdrop. Either that or it's that hillside that features in the Teletubbies programme. At first, I thought L had sneaked me into ‘Alice in Wonderland’ instead. Except a Tim Burton film is sure to be darker and there's not much dark here.

From up high Susie watches down over the aftermath of her death, like an angel and she doesn’t seem to mind being dead. The Salmon family react as you would expect, at first reluctant to believe in what has happened and then consumed by grief. Meanwhile Harvey is not suspected by the police and gets away with the crime. Jack, Susie's father, isn’t so sure and continually harasses the police about Harvey.



I don’t know the book so I’m probably not in a good position to comment. Although I’ve read a synopsis of it and L has filled me in on details as well. So I was expecting an intricate story and a disturbing one, dealing with difficult issues, but we didn’t get it. In fact we didn’t get much at all. I kept waiting for something to happen but nothing did, for ages. This was not edge of the seat stuff.

Perhaps Peter 'Lord of the Rings' Jackson was the wrong person to be handed the reins to this film. His liking for the visual effects side of film making has been used to full effect and to make room for all that, they’ve had to dispense with the plot, or perhaps all the computer generated stuff is to try and distract you from the fact that somewhere along the line they forgot what the plot was.



The film also has some celebrated actors in it. Rachel Weisz is the distressed mother and Susan Sarandon plays her alcoholic mother. While Mark Wahlberg plays the devastated father well and there is an excellent performance from Stanley Tucci, who is menacing as the murdering neighbour.

There are a few good scenes but not enough of them. Suzie was supposed to be trying to influence things from beyond the grave but there is little of this. It kind of got exciting when Susie's sister Lindsey grew suspicious and finally breaks into Harvey's house where she discovers information that implicates him. He discovers her there but fails to catch her. Then comes an unbelievable scene where she takes an age to hand the information over to her family, as if it wasn’t that important after all. In the meantime, Harvey, knowing the game is up, disappears. Although he eventually gets his comeuppance when he is killed by an icicle...



It’s a very empty film and an incoherent one, which perhaps thinks it’s a murder mystery but a poor one at that. The murder is after all revealed early on but we still get the suspicion that, that is what the film is all about. It has no flow at all and it’s hard to see who the finished product is aimed out. Perhaps they asked Jackson to Disney-fy the story but how can you do that to a story about a girl who has being attacked and murdered.