KEITH on Reels

Loosely based on actual events, Gold tells a fascinating story about a down-on-his-luck gold prospector portrayed by the believably gruff Matthew McConaughey, but, unfortunately, the movie fails to meet expectations with its haphazard script. McConaughey plays the balding pot-bellied Kenny Wells who inherits struggling Washoe Mining based in Reno, Nevada after the death of his successful father and is looking for his big break. After working out of a bar where his girlfriend, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, is a waitress, he has a dream of having a successful mine in the jungles of Indonesia. He decides to travel to Indonesia where he devises a plan with a desperate geologist named Michael Acosta, portrayed by Édgar Ramírez. They set the groundwork for a mine deep in the remote jungle on a shoestring budget raised by friends and small investors back in Reno. After months of finding nothing, Acosta finally discovers traces of gold and exuberantly informs Wells who has been suffering from malaria. Thinking that they hit it big time, the rest of the film follows McConaughey’s character as he raises additional funds and is courted by Wall Street. However, his overnight success strains his relationship with his longtime girlfriend. Eventually, his company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and many analysts predict that he has discovered the largest gold deposit of the decade, worth almost 30 billion dollars. His life has finally on an upward trajectory, but the viewer is aware that something is amiss because the film flashes forward to the late nineties as he is being investigated by the FBI. Due to outside circumstances, including the actions of the authoritarian Indonesian government, and tensions with his partner Acosta, everything seems to go wrong for the briefly successful Wells. The movie’s major flaw is that the plot is all over the place, and there is an obvious lack of suspense or excitement for such an intriguing story about gold prospectors. Overall, I found it to be a surprisingly dull film that wasted a very strong performance from Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey who physically delved deep into the character.