All the Money in the World

"The plan was always for the part of J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World to be brought to the screen with an attention-grabbing gimmick. For Kevin Spacey, the original actor slated to play the Scrooge-like, larger than life character, it was conventional: a pound of prosthetics and makeup to make him look decades older. Such feats, as a fat suit-padded Gary Oldman reminded us recently as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, summons the revered accolade that one is ‘virtually unrecognisable’ – a distinction audiences disproportionately associate with the actor rather than their miracle-working cosmeticians."

"Until the breathless climactic scene, which it effectively conjures from whole cloth, the film feels a little too safe, a reminder of such by-the-numbers Scott exercises as "Body of Lies" and "Matchstick Men.""

"Scott has made simply a competent thriller that dazzles only in the ingeniousness of its lightning-quick and proficient re-staging.... The annihilating indifference of the 1 percent will just have to wait until next year."

"The film reminds us that, onscreen and off, bumps along the road of life can often be surmounted by money carefully applied, but a tenacious mother (or director) is what ultimately makes the difference."

"But with the help of Plummer's tremendous villain-autocrat performance, Ridley Scott gives us a very entertaining parable about money and what it can't buy."

"It won't be long before the drama, attention-to-detail and sheer storytelling nous that characterises the rest of All the Money in the World sweeps any doubts far away."

"At the 11th-hour, Ridley Scott worked magic to replace scandal-plagued Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer, who plays John Paul Getty with "magisterial skill" in this fact-based kidnap thriller."

"Plummer’s performance makes Getty a memorable, terrible tycoon, and bringing him in for the redo is a gamble that paid off. But the film is risk-averse and unremarkable."

"It's a true-life yarn loaded with extremes, of wealth, personal eccentricities, grief, tension, daring, criminal means to political ends, maternal drive and luck, both bad and good."

"A crime thriller concerned with the dehumanising, alienating effects of concentrated wealth."

"Two men in their 80s power the month's most pulse-pounding thriller. Who could have seen that coming?"