Gold is the latest in a series of films that play partly as buddy comedies, partly as dramas and are based on true stories about people who run into trouble because their reach exceeds their grasp.
The Infiltrator starred Bryan Cranston as a straitlaced undercover Treasury agent working with the looser John Leguizamo in their efforts to take down the cash of drug lord Pablo Escobar. War Dogs, meanwhile, put us in the shoes of a pair of arms dealers played by Jonah Hill and Miles Teller who scam the U.S. government out of gigantic sums of money all while putting their lives on the line by dealing with shady folks. War Dogs is probably slightly better than The Infiltrator—it more readily accepts the ludicrous behavior of its titular characters—but they both suffer somewhat from being constrained by reality and neither seems quite sure what tone to take throughout.
And now we have Gold, another dramedy "based on true events." Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey) comes from a long line of prospectors, but the family empire has fallen on hard times since the passing of Papa Wells (Craig T. Nelson). His company's stock is worth pennies, the few leases they hold are worthless, and the family's friends are fleeing from the firm's failures.
Hocking his girlfriend Kay's (Bryce Dallas Howard) gold watch to fund a last-ditch effort to turn everything around, Wells heads to Indonesia to track down Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez), a geologist famous for hitting an enormous copper strike some years back. Wells' gamble pays off: They find gold, and lots of it. Of course, as they say, more money, more problems, and the rest of Gold is concerned with highlighting the ways in which wealth complicates Wells' personal, professional, and legal life.
Gold's strongest suit is its cast, which is filled with familiar (and familiar-ish) faces. In addition to the above-the-line stars, there's a killer lineup of character actors throughout: Stacy Keach, Bruce Greenwood, and Corey Stoll all have modest supporting parts. But it was most pleasing, perhaps, to see Macon Blair—most famous for smaller indie fare such as Blue Ruin and Green Room—pop up as one of Wells' prospector buddies.
Unfortunately, I was never entirely sure of what kind of movie I was watching. Was this a buddy comedy, one in which a hucksterish Wells—played with a rakish grin to go along with his paunch and stringy, balding hair by McConaughey—hustles his way through life? Was it a classic American success story, one in which the little guy sticks it to the man and, through dint of his hard work, comes out on top? Was it a fraudster's tale, a sort of Wolf of Wall Street minus the debauchery and drug abuse?
McConaughey is a delight to watch and he's all revved up here, putting on an Oscar-type, over-the-top performance and doing Oscar-type, over-the-top damage to his body: the gut he's sporting, especially when compared to the rail-thin AIDS victim he won an Academy Award for in Dallas Buyers Club, calls to mind Robert De Niro's dramatic transformation in Raging Bull.
As fun as McConaughey is to watch, though, I'm not quite sure he's enough to save Gold.