Critical Condition: Trust

Trust | SoHo, 9.30 Monday

➢ “If you don’t remember the actual 1973 case, in which John Paul Getty III was abducted in Rome and his grandfather — oil billionaire John Paul Getty — initially refused to pay the ransom, you may have caught Ridley Scott’s retelling of the story in the action-packed All the Money in the World ...  FX’s Trust (★★★ out of four) might seem redundant: yet another version of a well-trod saga. But to its credit, the series, from Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle and writer Simon Beaufoy, adds to the narrative a version of the story that’s more black comedy than action-adventure, more heightened drama take than sober Oscar bait.” — USA Today.

➢ “All the Money in the World and Trust are different enough that watching both doesn’t feel excessively repetitive. If you see All the Money first, though, Trust will feel a little anticlimactic … The series is flashy, intermittently entertaining and ephemeral — a ghastly event turned into a jazzy satire … But the show’s appealing performers and catchy look don’t yet outweigh its lack of cohesion and its readiness to fall back on platitudes about the corrosive effects of wealth.” — New York Times.

➢ “Trust succeeds because it is about wealth as a disease. There are other threads to the show, and those threads are occasionally worthwhile. But the core of it engages with the corrosive heart of capitalism — embodied, almost too well, by the unbelievably monstrous soul of Getty the patriarch: an efficient and mercenary oil tycoon, a Scrooge who delights in manipulating the lives of those around him … Trust has something relevant to offer us today — if only to remind us what type of people end up having enough money to own the world.” — Variety.

➢ “The first [episode] is a compelling enough start to the story, but the second features an ill-conceived split-framing technique that seems overly splashy and stylistically incongruous with the pilot; things are made even more jarring in that episode by the addition of one character speaking directly to the camera, which didn’t happen at all in the first episode. In the third episode, Boyle reverts mostly back to the style of the pilot, but adds in a random deviation here and there that makes you wonder what future episodes will look like.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

➢ “Beaufoy and Boyle reportedly have plans for another two seasons of Trust, in which they expand on the story of the Getty family saga … But the story of a family ruined by its privilege requires more than debauched pool parties in the L.A. sun or petulant heirs lamenting their lack of autonomy. Watching Trust means longing for some sense of the damage that caused America’s wealthiest family to rot from within, but it never comes.” — The Atlantic.