The greatest wealth FX’s “Trust” bestows upon the charm-impoverished viewer is Brendan Fraser’s performance. Fraser’s been out of the spotlight long enough for the opening image of James Fletcher Chace rolling onto the scene, announced by his immense cowboy hat, to tease your lips into a grin.
Fraser channels that hat into his character with an awareness of all that it implies. The first time we see Chace, a fixer for the Getty family, is in Rome. His sizable, milk-chugging American stomps his way toward getting where and what he wants, oblivious to how the locals perceive him. The actor plays Chace with a swaggering thickness that frequently verges on comedic. When he breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience, he does so with a corn pone casualness that evokes a salesman’s studied, “we’re all just friends here” vibe. And guess what? We’re buying.
In other hands these traits would be a vibe-killer — Mark Wahlberg recently played the role ably but unremarkably in the theatrical release you probably didn’t see, “All the Money in the World” — but Fraser works wonders, making it the main show.
If only we got to enjoy his magic straightaway instead of having to wait for the second episode.
Mind you, the opening episode of “Trust,” debuting Sunday at 10 p.m., provides enough of a spectacle to remedy a few of its noticeable shortcomings. Fraser is part of a powerhouse cast that gives Donald Sutherland top billing as oil tycoon J. Paul Getty Sr., with Hilary Swank as Gail Getty, the mother of young heir and wild-child John Paul Getty III (Harris Dickinson) whose major claim to fame was that he was kidnapped in Italy in 1973.
This first season of “Trust,” penned by Simon Beaufoy and directed by Danny Boyle, follows the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping, one of the most famous crime cases involving one of America’s elite families. Right off the top, Boyle and Beaufoy tip their hand by depicting the Gettys, particularly the paterfamilias, with a sniff of vulgarity intertwined with fascination, a kind of European take on an American cousin’s bombastic wealth and shortsightedness.
How well this works depends on how one feels about Boyle’s rock 'n' roll style, which is very much at work in the three episodes he directs. The aesthetics are undeniably impressive, particularly the set design of the Getty family’s retreat in the English countryside. The senior Getty's enormous bedroom is a monochrome work in onyx, perhaps symbolically reflective of the black-on-black spirit of the man who sleeps there.
The executive producers called upon the series' high-caliber players for a reason, and they deliver as well as one would expect them to. Swank’s talents probably could have been put to greater use, although in the episode made available to critics she plays Gail as suitably gruff and immune to the cosmic pull of the Getty family’s power and influence.
Sutherland is, on some level, turning in the sort of imposing portrayal we’ve come to expect of him, while, in other scenes, affecting a dispirited slump meant to somehow evoke the smallness the elder Getty. For the main miscalculation on the part of the kidnappers was grandpa’s intense miserliness.
Here’s a man surrounded by all variety of palatial trappings — elaborate furnishings, a slavishly devoted manservant named Bullimore (Silas Carson) and a harem of joyless, competitive girlfriends on call — who wash his socks in the sink and hang them on a line like a frugal pensioner. He can barely stomach his own son (played by Michael Esper), characterizing him and his other children his “feckless progeny.” Why on earth would he hand over any amount of money to save a grandson who disappointed him just as completely? The man has a pay phone installed in his house for guests, and family he doesn’t like, to use.
“Trust” has all the trappings of an extraordinary period piece, led mostly by such details that highlight the outrageousness of the economically fortunate. Nevertheless, for all of its zesty pacing and Fraser’s best and largely successful efforts to steal every scene he’s in, there’s some core element of soul and feeling missing from it.
Dickinson embraces the naiveté and idiocy of the 16-year-old Getty heir in a way that adds humanity to heightened historical venture. That he reminds viewers that a human life is at stake as opposed to some distant historical figure does a great service to “Trust,” and to this portrait of a family better known by their name than their individual personas. But in large part, he’s the only character that makes us want to care, and he’s just feckless enough (to recall Getty’s descriptor) to explain why we don’t.
Between this and the producers' choice to dwell on some of the less relevant details to the perturbation and helplessness of a family missing a child while its head holds too tightly to his pride and his wallet, the narrative velocity loses enough steam at points to make a person wonder how the energy can be sustained over 10 hours, to say nothing of the two more seasons that are planned.
Within that, however, struts the marvelous treat that is Fraser back in the saddle again. It might not be enough to compensate for the dearth of richness in overall plotting, but it does feel like one small asset that viewers can bank on.
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