By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Edgar Ramírez, Bryce Dallas Howard, Corey Stoll, Toby Kebbell, Timothy Simons, Adam LeFevre, Craig T. Nelson, Bruce Greenwood and Stacey Keach.
Rating: Average.
Stephen Gaghan, director of “Syriana” and Academy Award Winning Writer for “Traffic” brings “Gold” a drama that could have had a better execution but had some interesting moments and good performances.
Based on true events, “Gold” tells the story of Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey) an unlucky salesman who is passing through a tough break.
One day he has a dream that he must team up with Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramírez) an ambitious geologist who is based on Indonesia.
Wells decides to go to Indonesia and make a business deal with Acosta. They both form a partnership and they begin their search for gold in the jungles and start digging for the precious metal.
Thanks to their success, they begin to draw the attention of Wall Street brokers, who want also a piece of it. Now both Wells and Acosta will try to protect their investment before it falls to the wrong hands.
Like I mentioned before, “Gold” is a movie that could have been much better executed since it had an interesting premise.
One of the reasons I mention this is that the major flaw of the movie was the screenplay written by Patrick Massett and John Zinman. The script was too repetitive and fall in the tendency of over explaining plot elements.
I believe if the movie would have written by Stephen Gaghan, since his approach would have been completely different and the characters would have been more real and compelling.
The movie could have been told in less than two hours and still would have worked.
The positive note that I do acknowledge was the performance by Matthew McConaughey, who literally transformed himself for this role. His massive gain weight was one the things that impressed me the most and he isa very talented actor as well as Edgar Ramírez who delivered a great performance and he´s considered one of the most important latino actors in Hollywood this day.
Even though the performances were good, the movie had many flaws like I mentioned before and if the script would have had more work I do think it would have been a contender for this Oscar season but this was not the case and the results speaks for itself.
The ending of the movie was very surprising and as a member of the audience when I saw I didn´t expect it since the character of Kenny Wells was most of the time in deep trouble and portrayed a man who for one mistake he did, he lost everything
For moments “Gold” delivered the goods but the results could have been much better but this was not the case.
With that being said I cannot “Gold” for the execution of the screenplay and a weak direction by Stephen Gaghan, although he made a huge effort in trying to get the best of his actors and both McConaughey and Ramírez brought decent performances.
I invite you to leave your comments at emilio.frenk@gmail.com or my twitter at @FrenkEmilio.