Movie Review: Gold

Movie Review: Gold, Matthew McConaughey

Gold is based on the true story of Bre-X, a group of companies in Canada that supposedly struck gold in Indonesia. In Gold, however, the company is based in Reno, NV, and one of their employees is Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey), a prospector of sorts who is always looking to get rich.

Wells has a dream one day where he's searching for gold in Indonesia, and so he calls up an old friend, Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez), to see if there is any gold being found there. Acosta agrees to be his "tour guide" of sorts, and Wells sells a few pieces of jewelry, including a gold watch he bought for his girlfriend, Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard), to foot the bill for the plane ticket. Once he arrives in Indonesia, despite a few setbacks (including malaria), they eventually start finding gold, and Kenny is excited to become a very rich man.

The acting in this movie was great but the film was a little slow for me. McConaughey is obviously wearing veneers of some sort, and he gained 47 pounds for the role, which was interesting; there's a scene where he's shirtless, and some of the screening audience I saw the movie with gasped, since he looked so different. Edgar Ramirez is good here too, as is Bryce Dallas Howard, Corey Stoll, Stacy Keach, Craig T. Nelson, and more, in supporting roles; however, McConaughey definitely steals the show.

Yes, see this movie, if you can stand the slow pacing. Although I did check my watch a few times, the story line was interesting - it kind of reminded me of The Big Short meets The Wolf of Wall Street - and the ending was done very well. I'm guessing that the Bre-X story was "Hollywood-ized" a bit for this movie adaptation, especially the ending, but the story itself was fun to watch, and I'll be curious to see if McConaughey gets any 2018 award love from this film, since it's being released so early in 2017.

Gold is in theaters today, January 27th, and is rated R with a runtime of 121 minutes. 3.5 stars out of 5.

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