All About the Money (Sinéad O’Shea, 2026) 3½ out of 5 stars
If you had more money than you could possibly know what to do with, how would you spend it? Fergie Chambers doesn’t have to imagine. As the heir to the Cox Enterprises empire (yes, that Cox) he has access to generational wealth on a scale most people can’t even comprehend. What he chooses to do with it might come as a surprise. A few years ago, he gave a large stretch of rural Massachusetts land, complete with houses and pre-paid cars, to a small group of Marxist-Leninist communists, hoping they would use it as a base for revolution.
It’s the kind of story that feels as if it could only happen in the United States, and that’s exactly what makes it the perfect documentary subject. Though the situation is highly specific, it opens up far broader, age-old questions about wealth distribution, the idea of a “well-intentioned” philanthropic elite, and the overall complex relationship between ideology and money in the United States.
Fergie himself is endlessly fascinating. One moment you may sympathize with him, and the next you may hate him. He’s funny, confident, intense, fickle, and contradictory. The film wisely lets him be all these things at once, allowing itself to linger in his almost unknowable complexity.
Director Sinéad O’Shea (Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story), whom we hear behind the camera during interviews, presents herself as an almost neutral observer, and so it makes sense that she is an international filmmaker. But neutrality doesn’t mean she is a passive player here. She asks sharp, challenging questions without ever feeling judgmental.
One of the film’s most revealing moments comes when it’s disclosed that Fergie attempted to pay her not to release the documentary. She declined, and he accepted this. Most films would not include this behind-the-scenes knowledge, but it adds a feeling of necessity to the story, forcing us to consider what about the film might be controversial and why its release to the public could be important.
Still, the documentary occasionally narrows its focus too tightly around Fergie himself. What begins as a story about an ideological experiment in Massachusetts gradually becomes a character study. While this shift partly reflects the evolution of the project and Fergie’s relationship to it, the film sometimes feels more invested in the personalities involved than in fully interrogating the beliefs that brought them together.
If the film leaves us with anything, however, it’s that in no just society would it be possible for a single individual to possess enough wealth to casually shape political power according to personal whim, no matter how well-meaning. Impressively, the documentary never states this outright. The disappointing reality it presents says it loud and clear.
Hannah Tran
Hannah Tran is a filmmaker, writer, and friendly neighborhood barista from Las Vegas. She graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Film and English and is currently working on her first feature film. In her spare time, she can be found attending film festivals, running a local book club, and, of course, devouring as many movies as possible.