New film review #24: Gold (released 3rd Feb 2017)

Image source:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800302/?ref_=nv_sr_3

I know, I know.   I haven't posted on here in like what?   7-8 months?  Good lord do I suck at being consistent with uploading.   Hell, it even happens on my 3 YouTube channels (CHECK THEM OUT PLEASE #SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION).  However, while I may have fallen back on uploading as frequently as I personally feel I should that doesn't mean I can never return!  I hope.  To be fair I do tend to be a bit lax so I should really take note to tackle that. 

In any case, with the disappointing return of a hopeful maverick must also come the review of something with a similar background and underlying ethos.  And in this case I am talking about the recent film release of Gold starring Matthew McConaughuey, directed by Stephen Gaghan and written by Patrick Massett and John Zinman.  I should mention beforehand prior to going into this review that I feel bad about slagging it off as it contains a lot of talent in the cast most notably McConaughuey who himself most of all has been in considerably better productions than this droll and slow-paced trek of a film. 

So then, how does the plot of the film add up?  Well it starts off in 1981 with McConaughuey's Kenny Wells accepting an offer of more prestigious and higher-earning work in his father's gold pioneering company.  Fast-forward 7 years and not only is Wells's father long dead, but his company is on its last ropes with something drastic needing to be done in order to save Wells junior and his friends jobs.  Then, as if by some magical prompting (or by the magic of an arbitrary script), young Wells receives a vision in his brandy-induced dreams that he must call up an old friend and search for gold in the jungles of Indonesia.  The rest of the film after this point then follows the misadventures of Wells himself and his swarthy Hispanic compatriot Michael Acosta (played by Edgar Ramirez) try their best to keep their gold company afloat amidst a sea of hungry wall-street vultures and some shady activities on their own hands.

On paper this sounds like the plot for a good if not very good film.  Furthermore, the potential for the story in terms of its quasi-historiographical and dark/seedy underlying theme is fuel enough for any talented filmmaker to make, at the very least, an engaging film about the greed and folly of man.  However, it seems as if the film focuses almost entirely on this underlying theme of seediness and as a result, Wells, Acosta and the other main protagonists and antiheroes we see emerge throughout the story come across as slimy and greedy rather than down on their luck hopefuls working towards their big break.  And like I said before, this feels a bit tragic because in combination with a deluge of talent working on the film, the interesting and unique story really should have ensured that this was going to be one of the films of the year or at least of early-2017.  Instead, we get an overly-slow-paced bore of a film with unlikeable characters, wall upon wall of exposition and all this encompassed in a terribly paced 1st act and a horrendously boring and overly-long 3rd act.

This 3rd act in particular for me was the most boring part of the film to sit through.  By this point I had just sat through about 90 minutes of droll storytelling and characters I didn't care about only to be met with a series of scenes that kept hinting at the film nearing its end but never delivering until after the point at which I was tired of sitting on my arse.  This went on for nearly 30 minutes at the end of the film with minor and even some major story points being introduced or continued from early on in the film with little to no eventual conclusion to many if not all of them.  Because of this drawn-out final act, I not only felt bored by the end of the film but also somewhat annoyed as the final few scenes bizarrely explained very little while featuring a truckload of exposition and talking.  This was at the same time as the conclusion of all the major character's personal stories meeting either unsatisfying or incomplete resolutions.  Even the ones where their character arcs were completed, (that being Acosta and Wells), the conclusions in these cases came to either contradict the theme and narrative of the film or not correlate realistically to the development that character had made throughout the film.

I suppose the most prominent thing that contributed to this being the case is probably the direction in part but that would be somewhat unfair.  I did actually like a fair few scenes at least in terms of how they were shot such as Wells vision scene early on in the film (as daft as it was in practical senses).  If it isn't the directing that is the main source of this film's issues then I would probably say it has to be the writing.  I genuinely can't remember any of the dialogue or notable lines from the film.  Although saying that there is notable lines when I can't remember any is a bit of dichotomy so I could just be talking out of my arse again.

So in conclusion, this film had a lot of promise but really failed to deliver and as a result ends up being either forgettable or just a bit unappealing and unpleasant.  I would recommend this film if you are a fan of the work of the people who made and starred in it but even then I would just recommend rummaging through their other works and projects. 

Camerawork/cinematography: 6.5/10
Directing: 5/10
Writing: 4/10
Acting: 6.75/10
Other: 5/10
OVERALL RATING: 27.25/50

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