★★½ (2½ out of 4)
Matthew McConaughey has laid off movies in the last six years or so, writing a bestselling memoir, teaching film at the University of Texas in Austin, stumping for gun control, and almost running for governor of Texas. You know, stuff like that.
The Oscar winner’s return in “The Rivals of Amziah King” is hardly “The Odyssey,” but it is at its best a soul-deep journey of a guy trying to make a home in the world. And having fun doing it. Amziah King—that’s McConaughey—is a backwoods troubadour in rural Oklahoma. He plunks a banjo in a bluegrass band but makes a living as a beekeeper. And a good one. His honey is popular in the region.
It’s fun to hang with Amziah. Everybody says so. But life isn’t always sunny for our rascal hero. Like the title says, he has rivals. Somebody is stealing honey, including his. Could it be Dub, the blustery boss blustered to the hilt by Kurt Russell? Kateri, a spunky young Native-American woman, says it is. And she wants Amziah to fight back.
I should mention that Kateri is Amziah’s foster daughter. They haven’t spoken much since Amziah lost custody after his wife died. But there’s hope for bridge building when Amziah asks his daughter to join him in the business. And if that means taking on varmints, so be it.
Cornball? Maybe. But McConaughey thought movies could use an Amziah: “I just saw him as a king of a man, a father, a shepherd, leader of misfits. I was like, ‘Man, the world could use some innocence, some love, and some humor—and I could, too.’ I chose this in place of other movies I could have done for a whole lot more money.”
What a shame that the buzz of the bees and the tricked-up drama drown out the sound of the film’s beating heart.
Alright, alright, alright. The sincerity of the movie is hard to doubt. Denzel Washington was once in conversation for the role. And the writer-director is an Oklahoman himself. He’s Andrew Patterson, whose 2019 debut film—“The Vast of Night”—worked wonders on a shoestring. Said Patterson at the time: “We had the first few words — ‘1950s New Mexico-set sci-fi thriller’ —and then we could stuff that sausage casing with a lot of things nobody expects to find there.”
There’s a lot of things you won’t expect to find in his second movie as well. It keeps throwing things at you. For all the banjo strumming and good eatin’ at the potluck, there’s violence here that would make the “Terrifier” crowd wince. Right at the start, some guy gets the top of his head and his ponytail sheared off by farm machinery.
It even seeps into the touching father-daughter story. Kateri’s not against some vigilante justice. Another dude gets boiled to death between the hoedowns and the documentary-style focus on the intricacies of honey production. That doesn’t leave much for the other actors. Owen Teague, Scott Shepherd, Rob Morgan, Tony Revolori and Jake Horowitz struggle to make distinct impressions.
Strangest of all, McConaughey pretty much up and leaves during the last half of the movie. It’s a tribute, I guess, that the star throws the ball to the newcomer. That fits right in with what Amziah does with Kateri. But the McConaughey charm is much missed. And all the camera trickery of cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz can’t compensate. What a shame that the buzz of the bees and the tricked-up drama drown out the sound of the film’s beating heart.