‘Gold’ Sleepwalks Through Its Outrageous Story

Aryeh Harris-Shapiro

It’s clear from the trailers what kind of movie “Gold” wanted to be. The Styx song “Renegade” provides a perfectly cheesy backdrop for what looks to be a story in the vein of “American Hustle” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It looks like a high-energy movie about a flawed man scheming his way to riches and into deep, dark trouble. And, on paper, that’s what director Stephen Gaghan and the writing team of Patrick Massett and John Zinman have loosely adapted from the 1993 Bre-X mining scandal. But “Gold” becomes a depressingly dull watch, going through the motions with only Matthew McConaughey’s gimmicky performance to enliven it.

McConaughey stars as Kenny Wells, a mineral prospector who inherits his father’s empire and promptly drives it into the ground. Along with financial ruin, his failures take his hair and his physique. McConaughey’s performance is essentially one big physical gimmick and, as with Christian Bale’s “American Hustle” transformation, only draws attention to McConaughey’s movie-star qualities by attempting to cover them up. Even so, he commits hard, turning his sweaty intensity up to eleven and chewing scenery like a hungry hyena as Wells finds himself so desperate that he and former mining partner Mike Acosta (Edgar Ramírez) travel to Indonesia on a dream and a hunch to find a gold mine no one else thinks is there. Wells falls victim to malaria, and when he recovers he finds himself sitting on top of one of the largest gold finds of the decade.

What follows is a pretty standard rags-to-riches-to-rags romp, told without any of the humor or energy. The business dealings of the mining industry are presented without style or much substance. As companies alternately try to court Wells and steal his find, he drinks and rants his way through his success. There’s the seed of an interesting class-based conflict here that the movie does little with. The movie does little in general, dragging its feet through its setup before pushing Wells into alcoholic self-destruction at the first possible opportunity. The audience spends a long time with Wells but are given very little reason to care about him. He’s a passenger in his own story, an unpleasant presence whom the viewer doesn’t even get the pleasure of hating. Despite his sketchy vibe, he’s a stand-up businessman who finds himself the victim of the machinations of others instead of a scheming, active protagonist in his own right.

“Gold” does have its virtues. Robert Elswit’s photography is appealingly grimy and Maria Djurkovic’s ‘90s set dressing feels right. The supporting cast, especially Ramírez and Bryce Dallas Howard as Wells’s beleaguered girlfriend Kay, are appealing and talented. It’s clear that the people involved with “Gold” cared about it, as there’s a genuine degree of craft here on all levels. The film just isn’t involving or entertaining, an issue that no amount of period detail or method acting can overcome.

“Gold” premieres nationwide on Jan. 27.