Mud review

             It wasn’t that long ago when Mathew McConaughey was that bottle-tanned, oiled up, slick-back-haired, smug asshole in all of those bad romantic comedies. He was easy to hate. His acting was lazy, his accent was obnoxious, and his movies were terrible. But even at his worst, when he was always seen leaning against his female co-stars in the posters of those soul-sucking rom-coms, we had to remember that first performance in “Dazed in Confused”,  where he practically stole the entire movie as a stoned, post-high school graduate, who was equally sleazy and charming. There was something there and part of us knew that he should and probably could be much better than he was allowing himself to be.

                Some actors aren’t meant to universally liked and in the case of McConauhey, he seems to support a story better when he is either transgressing his rugged good looks or using them to mask his character’s true motivations. In the last few years we have seen him really go against the grain of his People-Magazine-Sexiest-Man-of-the-Year phase in favor of playing smaller, darker, more challenging roles in artist driven movies like “Magic Mike” as the pathetic aging strip-club owner,  the sexually dangerous hit-man in the NC-17 “Killer Joe” and now as a hobo with a shrouded past in “Mud”.

                Not unlike a modern day Huck Fin story, this film tells the tale of two southern fourteen year olds who live in the rural riverside of small-town Arkansas.  Even though Ellis (Tye Sheridan) is the more passive of the two, it is his personal journey that is used to tell this coming of age tale. When his best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) takes him out to a small piece of river-island to show him an abandoned fishing boat in a tree, it doesn’t take long for them to both realize that someone else is occupying their would-be fort.

                McConaughey shows up as Mud, a friendly but nonetheless intimidating hobo. With plans to get back in contact with his ex-girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), he ropes both kids into bringing him some food and supplies while he dodges the law in the wilderness.

                As Ellis works on getting Mud and Juniper to reconcile, he is also dealing with his parents’ divorce, losing his childhood home, and experiencing his own teenage flirtations with a local girl, a few grades above him. What I love about this film and what makes it a truly involving story is that it’s essentially a tale of what love means to the eyes of the impressionable—reminding us that first loves are also followed by first disappointments. It’s a moody picture full of dark suggestions and shady undercurrents—as experienced through the bathless underprivileged of the south—but at its core it is an unabashedly romantic film about the best intentions of humanity and it proudly wears it’s broken heart on its sleeve.

                The warm and tender tone established by writer/director Jeff Nichols, serves to support his actors and their performances with a somewhat detached but sympathetic camera style. Sheridan and Lofland, the two unknown teenage actors who play the leads in this film, are both outstanding. Like the children portrayed in older post-Spielberg movies such as “Stand by Me”, “Goonies”, and “The Sandlot”, these characters talk and reason like real pre-teens; they curse, they hyperbolize and they lie when they think it’s for a good cause or when they’re trying to get out of tight spot.  

                McCongauhey as the title character again finds a difficult balance to strike, as he must present himself as sketchy, amiable, funny, and possibly violent all at the same time. Because he has now played both extremes in the spectrum of his skillsets—everything from psychotically scary to scarily uncharismatic—he knows exactly where to place this character, by drawing the audience on his side with healthy reservations.

                “Mud” isn’t perfect but it’s pretty damn close. Sure, it’s about fifteen minutes too long and the third act stumbles into preposterous shoot-outs and some disappointing culminations in the plot but even those things can’t detract from how subtly powerful, thoughtfully written and skillfully made this movie usually is.  

Grade: B+

Originally published in The Basic Alternative/June-2013