Gold

Dig all you want, but there’s precious little beneath the veneer of Stephen Gaghan’s Gold. It’s not entirely without its strong points, but what goodwill the film builds by virtue of Matthew McConaughey’s outlandish performance is squandered by a series of underdeveloped supporting characters, stylistic missteps and a distinctly anticlimactic third act. Gaghan, McConaughey et al. have attempted to cash in on the wave of financially based prestige dramas of recent years, hoping to recapture the success of such films as American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street, or even harkening back to the likes of 1987’s Wall Street. The problem here is that Gaghan doesn’t seem to be in the same league as David O. Russell, Martin Scorsese or Oliver Stone — even if they might share a tax bracket.

Gaghan, Oscar-winning writer of Traffic and writer-director of Syriana, is clearly not accustomed to directing scripts that are not his own. Working from a screenplay penned by Patrick Massett and John Zinman, veteran TV writers whose last feature was 2001’s much-maligned Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Gaghan struggles to find the emotional through line of his protagonist’s arc and bounces between tonal modes with little regard for narrative consistency or emotional impact. While Massett and Zinman have structured their script with adequate technical proficiency, their pacing is atrocious and their attention to character is practically nonexistent. The less said of their dialogue the better, as it’s so ridiculous they felt the need to lampshade this fact in a notable exchange between McConauhey and co-star Edgar Ramirez. Gaghan does little to remedy these shortcomings, succumbing to a drastic second-act slump that never lets up. By the time the script reaches its third act, all conflict has drained from the proceedings like river silt from the pans of the indigenous gold miners Gaghan so lovingly photographs.

The most notable visual distinction of Gold is Gaghan’s lush Indonesian landscape, evocative of Francis Ford Coppola’s work on Apocalypse Now (if that film had been absent of any narrative depth). But Gaghan can’t commit to a style, vacillating between adventure-film tropes and social commentary on the financial system with all the grace of a “drunken raccoon” (one of the more poetic of Massett and Zinman’s inept lines). The majority of the film is visually flat, and attempts at overt stylization — such as a split-screen montage divided by a golden line (get it?) — only confuse matters further. At times, Gaghan attempts to lighten the proceedings by inserting some comedic elements which are not only jarringly incongruous but also almost uniformly ineffective. Does a shot of McConaughey’s beer-bloated buttocks contribute to story, character or atmosphere? Are tighty-whities inherently funny simply because they’re now out of fashion? And, if they weren’t funny the first time, will they be funny the fourth? Greater minds than mine will have to grapple with such questions, should they have the motivation (and free time) to do so.

McConaughey admirably commits to his role — the failed heir to a mining company whose motivations can be adequately summed up as greed and daddy issues — having uglied himself up significantly and playing the role to the hilt. But his portrayal is too broad at times, too restrained at others, almost as though Gaghan’s tonal inconsistency has rubbed off on his star. Edgar Ramirez is given a great deal of screen time but only one note to play, and Bryce Dallas Howard is relegated to a similar fate. Gaghan also wastes much of his cast’s potential for no discernible reason. Macon Blair, who has proven to be a remarkably talented performer in films like Blue Ruin and Green Room, is given exactly zero lines of dialogue. Why on Earth would you take one of the most interesting and idiosyncratic actors working today and put him in a background role that could just as easily have been performed by a day-player still trying to get his SAG card?

If it sounds like Gold left me with more questions than answers, that’s because it did — and not in a good way (see my recent review of Elle for an example of that kind of film). While McConaughey is (almost) always fun to watch, it would have taken a great deal more than just his charisma to save a film with this many drawbacks. I won’t go so far as to say Gaghan’s career has peaked, but I would like to see him go back to writing, which seems to be his strong suit. There might be gold in them thar hills, but there’s nothing precious to be found in Gold. It’s not terrible, and it most certainly isn’t great. At best, it’s a passable diversion that goes on too long, and that might well be my least favorite sort of movie. Rated R for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity.

Now Playing at Carmike 10, Regal Biltmore Grande, Epic of Hendersonville.