Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Ridley Scott, Roadshow Entertainment.
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Michelle Williams, Charlie Plummer, Mark Wahlberg
Based on true events, here’s a story about the lasting value of love over money.
Long-haired John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) was a rich 16-year-old American boy ‘slumming it in Rome’s bohemian fringes’ when he was kidnapped and held for a ransom of $US17 million in 1973.
His devoted mother, Gail (Williams) desperately tried to convince his oil billionaire grandfather (Christopher Plummer) to pay the ransom.
The world was shocked when he refused to do so: at the time of the kidnapping, he was the world’s richest man. There’s dark humour in the elder Getty’s attitude to his fortune.
As her son’s captors become increasingly unpredictable and vicious, Gail attempts to sway him and becomes an unlikely ally of Getty’s advisor (Wahlberg).
At the heart of this lengthy, but absorbing film, is the captivating acting from the three lead actors.
The story that followed — as it meanders, curves and displays nastiness — remains one of the most out-of-the-ordinary modern tales of avarice and idiocy.
In Scott’s dramatisation, Kevin Spacey was originally cast as Getty. However, he was replaced after sexual misconduct allegations were made against him.
