Gold (2016)

Well, hello there, nonexistent readers! Its been a minute, but today we are coming back with a view of 2016’s “Gold”, starring Matthew McConaughey. Apparently, this is based on the 1993 Bre-X Mining scandal, but since they’ve changed the names, places, and played up the events for Hollywood-ification, there is apparently as much in common with this as most episodes of Law & Order. Shall we start with the trailer?

The two main recognizable faces in here are Matthey McConaughey and Bryce Dallas Howard. McConaughey plays Kenny Wells, a modern day miner (or recent era miner, since this film takes place in the 1980s) who is going through a string of bad luck; his father dies, leaving him a profitable mining company that, while he is aware of how the business works, he is not quite experienced enough to keep going alone. The economy tanks, making an already precarious situation worse, sending him to live in his long-term girlfriends house.

The girlfriend, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, is less interested in “striking it rich” in the mining game, more concerned about starting a family and having a stable background. Honestly, she is played off as somewhat of a simpleton in this film, but she is low-key the only character in this movie that I generally thought was a thoroughly decent person. I did feel she was woefully underutilized, however. This movie came out right around the time of Jurassic World, so I would’ve thought she would have a much larger role. Basically she is the only person in this movie that searches for stability as opposed to success; at the beginning she offers getting Wells a temporary job at her father’s business, and about 2/3rds of the way she leaves him after he treats her poorly when success goes to his head. Like I said, the best character in the movie, and they relegated her to the background.

Anyway, so McConaughey is struggling to find a deal that will allow him to turn around his business. He has a dream about gold in Indonesia, flies down to find a hot shot prospector named Mike Acosta who also is down on his luck, then proceeds to risk everything on a whim; literally spending all of his money to find this gold. Then, while he is about to die from malaria, they strike gold. And not just a small amount; it is immediately found to be the largest gold mine of the decade, possibly in history.

The rest of the movie is all about the rise of his small mining company; they get a spot on the NYSE, the price of stock skyrockets, and they get potential buyers of their mine. Price leaves an 8-figure buyout on the table over naming rights, he buys off the Indonesian government by paying off the president’s son, he plays the game to skyrocket his stock price; its all good stuff, even if it is pretty commonplace for this sort of film. It’s like the training scene in a boxing movie; its pretty routine, but you have to have it. It’s expected.

Then, in the final act, you find out that Michael Acosta faked all the tests by “salting” the samples with gold. So the mine’s value immediately goes to zero, Kenny Price’s company goes bankrupt, and Michael Acosta vanishes after selling $164 Million of stock, and is presumed killed by international businessmen who have lost big on their investment. Additionally, the Indonesian president’s son also sells off all his stock, so it looks like a giant scam. The Feds are called in, everyone is ticked, and so on and so forth. In the end, the Feds find that Kenny was not in on it and let him go. He returns to his girlfriend broke and penniless, and everyone loses their money. Then, in the last 20 seconds before the film, Kenny gets a letter from Michael Acosta with a check from $82,000,000, honoring the agreement that they split the findings 50/50. So glad he somehow comes out ahead. (eyeroll)

I’ll be honest… I enjoyed this movie. Rotten Tomatoes hit it with a 42% critic and a 47% user rating, and I find that to be low. Honestly, I imagine a lot of viewers and critics are not wildly interested in this sort of world, but I found it interesting. It wasn’t the best business drama I’ve seen (that might go to The Founder), but I found it plenty engaging. Also, Matthew McConaughey is one of those actors who is great to watch in anything (well, anything post 2010). Every so often, its great to watch a film that isn’t so much about explosions and fight scenes, and more about actual drama that can happen in real life.

To summarize my opinion on 2016’s “Gold”… Rotten Tomatoes has this one wrong. Don’t expect the best business drama ever made, but it certainly does it well enough to be worth your time.