“Everything has a price,” says billionaire oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty (Christoper Plummer stepping into the disgraced brogues of Kevin Spacey). “The great struggle in life,” he continues, “is coming to grips with what that price is.” This, in a nutshell, is what screenwriter David Scarpa, in only his third feature, sets out to explore in director Ridley Scott’s solid if slow-moving adaptation of John Pearson’s 1995 biography Painfully Rich, subtitled The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty.

The struggle which Getty and his former daughter-in-law Gail Harris (Michelle Williams) try to come to grips with is if, how and when to pay the $17m ransom to facilitate the release of Getty’s sixteen year old grandson JPG3 (Charlie Plummer, no relation) whose first line of the movie “I can take care of myself” is swiftly discredited when he is bundled into the back of a Volkswagen camper van by a bunch of Italian heavies led by the con-with-a-conscience Cinquanta (Romain Duris).

Getty’s first response to paying the ransom is much like Spacey’s voicemail greeting: “I’m not available”. With a ticker tape of the latest market prices unfurling around his feet like a roll of Andrex, he considers his late father’s advice that “a man who has children gives hostages to fortune” and dismisses the demand on the grounds that if he pays for JPG3 he may put his thirteen other grandchildren at risk and, more importantly, be held liable for their release should they too be kidnapped.

Gail, on the other hand, just wants her son back. The problem, though, is that after an acrimonious divorce from her hedonistic husband JPG2 (Andrew Buchan) she’s $17m short of the $17m asking price. “We’re not poor, we’re broke,” she once corrected him. “There’s a difference.” A difference exacerbated when she secured sole parental responsibility on the sole condition that, other than maintenance payments, she receives not a dime from the Getty dynasty.

To be a member of which, we are told by JPG3’s intermittent narration, is “an extraordinary thing”, “special”, “nobody’s fool”. As exemplified by the fact that though Getty is the richest man in the world, he is as frugal and mean as Scrooge: handwashing his own shirts to save ten dollars in hotel laundry bills; installing a pay phone to minimize outgoings; and, to top it off, loaning money to his wayward son in order to secure the release of his grandson, not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is tax deductible. Extraordinary indeed.

Through the persistent efforts of Gail and his security adviser-turned-hostage negotiator whose name sounds like an instruction to a dog, Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), Getty is eventually forced to put a price on life. Which he finds incredibly difficult for, as he readily admits, he values property over people, objects and artefacts over flesh and blood. The former of which “never change” or “disappoint”; whereas the latter are “parasites” and “pickpockets” whose loss, to quote Scrooge, “decrease the surplus population”.

If it’s fireworks you’re after, jog on. For apart from a fleeting moonlit chase through the cobbled streets of Rome, jog is about the paciest the dialogue and action gets. Likewise, if you’re looking to spot the cracks in Scott’s decision to recast Plummer for Spacey, again, don your Nikes for a quick walk around the block. For his performance is the best thing in the film. The scenes without him don’t sag (Williams and Wahlberg are excellent); it’s just that those in which he features light up the screen.

In JPG3’s opening narration, he hopes that by sharing his story people will understand and “forgive us”. Us being the “Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes” of the “Painfully Rich”. Given Plummer’s perfect combination of grit and vulnerability, we certainly understand. But forgive? Getty to f**k! In much the same way that, for all the money in the world, the alleged victims of Spacey et al refuse to sell their silence, sell their soul.

Director: Ridley Scott
Writers: David Scarpa, John Pearson (based on the book by)
Stars: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg
Peter Callaghan
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