All The Money In the World (2017) - Ridley Scott

Telling the elaborate and engrossing true story centered around the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III's grandson, All The Money In The World is a narratively dense experience which manages to remain coherent, insightful, and compelling from start-to-finish, a testament to Ridley Scott's experience as a filmmaker.  Ridley Scott's strongest attributes are on full display for All The Money In The World, which features great economics of filmmaking and a keen visual eye, with the filmmaker tackling the events surrounding this kidnapping in intricate detail while doing so with a confidence that is palpable and rarely seen from such a complex story with so many moving pieces.  Overall the script is sharp and assertive, but it often finds itself oscillating between insightful and simplistic from one scene to the next, and while the film should appease anyone looking for a good crime thriller, the story ends up feeling more slight than it should from a thematic perspective.  The film's deconstruction of domineering wealth somehow manages to be both nuanced in stretches yet bluntly assertive in other moments, as All The Money In the World's best attribute always seems to fall back more on the characterizations and performances they create.  Through this dense narrative, the characterizations and by proxy, performances, shine brightest, and by the end of All The Money In the World all these characters, including the imperious John Paul Getty III, are left scarred emotionally by this horrendous kidnapping.