Staying Fit
Where to Watch: Sundays on FX
Premiere: March 25, 10 p.m. ET
Stars: Brendan Fraser, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Swank
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Christopher Plummer, 88, was terrific as cold-hearted oil billionaire J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott’s December movie All the Money in the World. But now director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), 61, and star Donald Sutherland, 82, top them with a 10-episode series, Trust. It’s about the same case, the story of Getty's teen grandson’s violent 1973 kidnapping by Roman mafiosi , but with an even livelier style than the movie's, and more riveting, horrifying detail about a clan, among the world’s wealthiest, more tormented than Dynasty’s Carringtons and Empire’s Lyons put together.
It’s a family feud so lurid Hollywood could scarcely make it up — even though angry relatives are making headlines threatening to sue both dramas. The nephew of J. Paul Getty’s kidnapper accused the Plummer film of making his uncle’s mafia gang look dumb — “They were great criminals!” said their lawyer — and now the victim’s sister calls the Sutherland series “a wildly sensationalized false portrayal” of the Gettys.
It’s certainly sensational. Trust, billed as “inspired by” reality, is better than the film because it gives a deeper sense of family dynamics in a mansion where everyone spies on everyone, angling for cash, placating the implacable patriarch. In the film, Plummer’s plutocrat has little reason for refusing to pay the $17 million ransom demanded for his grandson, which caused the kid’s Mafia captors to mail his ear to the elder Gettys. Like Shakespeare’s Iago, Plummer's Getty is a motiveless malignity — just a bad guy.
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