All About the Money review – confusion and compelling weirdness of wealthy leftwing heir

This profile of James ‘Fergie’ Chambers, who set up a commune in rural Massachusetts and is fighting extradition from Spain, is a brave attempt to package a complex character and storyFor a film that dispenses a lot of backstory information via intertitles, you are left with a lot of questions when the credits finally roll. For example, how in the world did Irish film-maker Sinéad O’Shea gain access to her main subject: James Cox Chambers, AKA “Fergie”, the American heir to a multimillion-dollar fortune – whom we first meet as the founding member and bankroller of a communist community of less than a dozen people in Alford, a town in rural Massachusetts. A scion of the wealthy Cox family, a liberal clan who have backed leftist causes in the past, Fergie wants to take things even further politically and is willing to use his own hefty inheritance (about $250m) to support his fellow communards’ commitment to learning, self-sustaining farm work and running a jujitsu studio and gym that won’t accept members of the police as members.But when the group decide to protest at Elbit Systems, the Israeli-owned arms manufacturer, its actions slide into “criminal mischief and criminal trespass…

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