All the Money in the World - so good they made it twice!

Say what you like about Ridley Scott but there is no denying that when it comes to film-making he’s the fastest gun around. All the Money in the World had a Christmas Day release date in the United States, so it could qualify for the Oscars. That’s a tight turnaround given they didn’t start shooting until May.

Then there was the small matter of the scandal. The film originally featured Kevin Spacey but, after his exposure as a sexual predator, Scott unilaterally decided to replace him even though the film was complete and only weeks away from release. Scott has form at this sort of thing; Oliver Reed died during shooting of Gladiator with several scenes unshot and Scott got him into the finished film.

But this is more than a bit of CGI trickery. This was a root and branch re-shoot; 22 scenes in nine days starting over Thanksgiving weekend. The original stars, Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg, were brought back and Spacey was replaced by Christopher Plummer, evidently the director’s first choice for the role. The results are nothing short of a triumph.

Even if this film had been conceived as it finally appears it is a superb piece of work; for it to reach our screens in its current state is little more than miraculous. This is a case of keeping the best for last because it is one of the films of the year and a series contender for awards season.

It is based on the true story of the kidnapping of young Paul Getty (Charlie Plummer, no relation) in Rome in 1973. His grandfather J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) is the wealthiest man who has ever lived, but he refuses to pay a penny in ransom. With her son’s life at stake it falls to his mother (Michelle Williams) – Getty’s daughter-in-law Gail Harris – to get the old man to pay up.

This is a nail-biting ticking clock scenario. The boy’s life is constantly in jeopardy but there is also the suggestion that given his family circumstances, he might be better cared for by his kidnappers than his family. They do at least value him.

The film features all sorts of improbable twists and turns but what is remarkable is that the ones you are likeliest to dismiss as wild exaggeration are in fact true; like the world’s wealthiest man doing his own laundry to save on hotel bills, or having a pay phone box installed in his baronial mansion so his guests could pay for their own calls.

Scott directs the film at a frantic pace as it moves back and forward through the tumultuous lives of this turbulent family. It is an intimate story told on an epic scale with some stunning cinematography from his frequent collaborator Dariusz Wolski. David Scarpa’s script turns a saga that ran for months into a taut two hours and at the centre of all of this are two remarkable performances.

Christopher Plummer has never been better than as Getty. There’s a line in voice-over to the effect that being a Getty is like being from another planet. Plummer does a superb job in portraying a man who is in this world but not necessarily of this world. The film suggests that Paul really is his favourite, a second chance for the lousy job he did in parenting his own son, and yet Getty is adamant that he will not pay a cent in ransom. It would be easy to play this role as a pantomime monster, but Plummer has a nuanced, weary air which makes you by turns sympathetic and horrified.

Michelle Williams is similarly good as Gail Harris. It’s a performance that veers from the feral to the fragile. She begins as a sort of Lady Macbeth character trying to manipulate her feckless husband, and ends up confronting the world’s most powerful business empire to save her child.

The film’s weak spot is Mark Wahlberg as Fletcher Chase, Getty’s security chief who is told to handle things. Unlike the other two, Chase is an amalgam of several characters, so Wahlberg doesn’t really have a lot to do other than keep the story moving along.

The greatest achievement of All the Money in the World is that, to quote the great Eric Morecambe, you can’t see the join. This is film-making of the highest order not only from Scott and Wolski but also from editor Claire Simpson, and even the costume department who had to cope with Wahlberg having lost 30 pounds between the re-shoots.

It’s a remarkable display of bravura directing from Scott who has taken the most difficult circumstances of his career and turned them into one of the best films of his distinguished career. If that’s not worth an Oscar, it certainly ought to be.

Hostiles - an old school Western with a contemporary message

Rather like that of Mark Twain, the death of the Western has been greatly exaggerated. Certainly, it is no longer the number one genre that once it was – in the early part of the 20^th century for example, the bulk of the films screened in Glasgow were cowboy pictures. However, it remains a genre that, while not in its previous robust health, continues to offer interesting material with contemporary resonance.

The Western is America’s gift to the movies and it is a genre that is sufficiently flexible to provide a consistent commentary on the American century. It really came into its own after the Second World War when, for example, James Stewart’s compelling series of psychological Westerns with Anthony Mann spoke to the traumatised veterans of World War 2. John Ford’s cavalry trilogy – Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950) – lauded the manifest destiny of the American immigrants from Europe. Less than ten years later in The Searchers (1956) Ford was expressing his disappointment at the failure of the American Dream, especially in relation to the Hollywood blacklist.

Some of the most eloquent critique of the Vietnam war came in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably The Wild Bunch (1969). While the following year the ongoing concern with the treatment of Native Americans was highlighted in Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue and Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (both 1970).

The point of all of this is that Scott Cooper’s latest film, Hostiles is in good company. It is a Western which reflects and meditates on the state of the West much as Clint Eastwood did in his superb Unforgiven (1992). While Eastwood reflected on the consequences of violence this film reflects on the consequences of racism.

Captain Joe Blocker (Christian Bale) is an implacable, exterminating, avenging angel of a cavalry officer who, we are told, has ‘taken more scalps than Sitting Bull’. Blocker is a man completely inured by the life he has led to the point that when he is ordered to escort terminally ill Cheyenne chieftain Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) back to the reservation to die in his own land he refuses. In the end it takes a Presidential decree to get him to fulfil the task.

Blocker is as brutal as we have come to expect in his treatment of the Cheyenne until he and his patrol chance upon a burned-out farmhouse. Inside they find Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike), the sole survivor of a massacre which begins the film in unflinching detail. Mrs Quaid is grief-stricken to the point of madness and Blocker is touched by the experience.

As she joins them on their journey, there unfolds a catalogue of racism, brutality and ethnic cleansing in microcosm as the film contemplates the way the Native American has been treated on screen and in real life.

The film’s weakness is a tendency to preach.  The images from Masanobu Takayanagi are breath-taking and the points they make are sufficiently eloquent without the script hammering home the obvious; this is not a film for the hard of thinking and it would be nice to see Scott Cooper give his audience a little credit.

At the heart of the film are a couple of extraordinary performances. Bale is superb as Blocker, a nuanced, thoughtful, construction which shows us the character’s sensitivity without ever abandoning his capacity for remarkable violence. He is well matched by Pike whose Rosalee Quaid has a stillness about her which is much more affecting than any screaming histrionics might be.

There is also some very nice support from Rory Cochrane in a career-best performance as a sergeant who is well and truly on his last nerve, and Wes Studi who brings an appropriate dignity to his role as Yellow Hawk.

Those who like the Westerns action-packed will find enough here to satisfy them but Hostiles is really for those who prefer their Westerns a little more on the thoughtful side. It is worth sticking with, especially for the most elegant and affecting final shot that I have seen in a long time.

It's Molly's Game but we will all want to play

One of the more frequently quoted aphorisms about movie making is that you should ‘show, don’t tell’. This makes sense at first glance because it is a visual medium, but it is more accurately expressed by the great Alexander Mackendrick whose advice is ‘show, then tell’. In his directing debut Molly’s Game, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin seems to have a new version along the lines of ‘show while telling about twice as fast as you ever thought possible’.

As you would expect from the man behind The West Wing, The Social Network, and Steve Jobs, Sorkin’s script rattles along at a phenomenal pace. However, he is sure-footed enough as a director to structure the film sufficiently well for the audience to keep up providing they keep concentrating.

In the best Sorkin traditions Molly’s Game offers a compelling insight into an arcane world; in this case high stakes poker. Based on a true story, Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) is a potential Olympic skier whose career is ended by a devastating accident. She takes time out, moves to LA and ends up working for a speculator who runs a high stakes poker game as a side-line. The game attracts some Hollywood high rollers and after learning the ropes Molly makes her move; luring the A- listers away she sets up her own game.

Eventually this becomes the highest stakes game in the world attracting whales – as they are known in the gambling world – from all corners of the earth. These include a couple of Russian mobsters who attract the interest of the FBI and this is pretty much where we come in with Molly under arrest and facing jail unless she spills the beans.

Sorkin’s structure owes a lot to movies like The Big Short (2016). The minutiae of poker are largely irrelevant to most of us but taking a leaf out of Mackendrick’s book Sorkin finds a way of communicating enough of the game visually, so we can follow the story – showing, then telling.

Telling the story through a mixture of flashback and flashforward Sorkin uses Molly’s relationships with two father figures to move things along. Her real father, played by Kevin Costner, is someone who has always demanded too much. Her surrogate father figure, her lawyer Idris Elba, is equally demanding but he is also the voice of the audience trying to make sense of Molly’s slightly implausible story.

At the heart of the film is a sensational, uncompromising performance from Jessica Chastain as Molly. It owes a nod to last year’s little seen Miss Jones, but Chastain builds on her work in that film to create a compelling character here. Molly Bloom is driven to succeed in sport and when that is taken from her, she is then driven to win in a traditional alpha male milieu.

If the ending of the film is a little pat – both father figures get plot resolving speeches – that is perhaps forgivable in such a complex narrative. The fact remains that Molly’s Game is a marvellously entertaining film with a terrific performance at its core.