Matthew McConaughey was first introduced to film fans as Wooderson in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993), a twentysomething, small-town loser who knew damn well that he was too old to be ogling teenage girls, but hey: "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."
There's a similar, self-aware degree of sleaze in McConaughey's Kenny Wells, the hustler at the centre of Gold. Having struck gold – literally – at work, Kenny, in the most gif-friendly shot you may see all year, waits on a hotel bed for his long-time girlfriend (Dallas Howard), posing "alluringly" in Y-fronts and thinning hair, paunch in hand, surrounded by yellow roses.
As Gold opens, it's the early 1990s and Kenny might as well be a loom weaver. Stuck in the dying mining industry, whiskey glass to hand, and making business calls from the pub, this clownish riff on Willy Loman is a relic from an age of best-forgotten business practices. Ever the total chancer, a dream takes him to Indonesia in search of a geologist named Michael Acosta (Édgar Ramírez). Together they venture into the jungle in search of gold. Amazingly, they find it.
Based loosely on the 1993 Bre-X mining scandal, Gold shuffles – not always seamlessly – between Borneo adventure and a standard Wall Street bubble-burst drama. This is a project that has bounced between Ben Stiller, Michael Mann, Paul Haggis, Spike Lee and Christian Bale – amongst others – since 2011, and it can feel a little overworked.
Still, it makes for decent yarn-spinning thanks to McConaughey, who has enough charisma to carry a protagonist who remains an iffy prospect until the final credits. It helps that the star has plenty of talent to bounce off, including the enigmatic, pragmatic Ramírez, a glad-handling Stacy Keach, a hard-nosed Corey Stoll, earnest Toby Kebbell and the effortlessly charming Dallas Howard.
There Will Be Blood DOP Robert Elswit has form in prospecting and makes merry with the contrasts between verdant tropical storms and shady backrooms.
When the tricksy denouement hits, we’re not sure if we’ve been hoodwinked, but we’re happy to have been taken for a ride, nonetheless.
