7.5/10
Writer/director Jeff Nichols had Take Shelter in 2011, one of my favorite movies of the year, and returns with Mud. kihei said it best in his review - if Take Shelter was a home run, Mud is more like a solid single. It's a good movie, doesn't make any major missteps, but just doesn't reach the same heights of Nichols' prior effort.
The acting is excellent all around (say nothing else for Nichols, he gets a great performance out of his leading man - Matthew McConaughey, here) and the two young boys in particular. The atmosphere and setting of rural Arkansas is great too, obviously coming natural to Nichols, a native of the area. The story is good, and always interesting.
I guess my biggest problem is that what initially starts out with a lot of mystery and hidden meaning turns out to be quite simple in the end. There's a lack of subtlety throughout that foreshadows many major plot developments, making the movie feel clumsier as it goes along. And overall I just felt that the story between McConaughey's and Reese Witherspoon's characters was...askance - not fully fleshed out, and not sitting comfortably beside the coming-of-age story of the two boys, which the movie dealt with very well.
In any event, it's been fun watching this sort of 'late period resurgence' of McConaughey, as seen in Killer Joe, Bernie, and now Mud. Hopefully he continues on this streak because it turns out he's quite good at this acting business.
No comments:
Post a Comment