Matthew McConaughey Gets an Austin Homecoming in Andrew Patterson’s Wild, Soulful Southern Crime Tale in our The Rivals of Amziah King review.
There are normal ways to see a movie, and then there is watching Matthew McConaughey’s new film immediately after the Alamo Drafthouse names a cinema after him.
Earlier this week at Alamo Drafthouse Mueller, Austin gave McConaughey the kind of homecoming usually reserved for quarterbacks, astronauts and men who have successfully smoked a brisket for 14 hours without once opening the lid. Mayor Kirk Watson was there. Director Andrew Patterson was there. Angelina LookingGlass was there. McConaughey took the stage and talked about arriving in Dazed and Confused for what was supposed to be a tiny role, only for Wooderson to keep finding his way into more scenes.
Thirty three years later, there is now a Matthew McConaughey Cinema in Austin. That is a difficult act for any movie to follow. Fortunately, The Rivals of Amziah King is exactly the kind of movie that benefits from a little mythology.
Patterson, who directed The Vast of Night, has made something wonderfully difficult to classify. McConaughey plays Amziah King, an Oklahoma beekeeper, honey producer and bluegrass musician whose orbit is filled with oddballs, workers, friends and people who seem to have wandered in one day and simply never left.
Then Kateri arrives.
Played by newcomer Angelina LookingGlass, she is Amziah’s former foster daughter, returning after years apart. Her presence slowly gives the movie its emotional center, even while the story begins wandering into crime, rival honey operations, revenge, violence and something that occasionally resembles a heist movie organized by people who would probably rather be playing music.
None of this should fit together, but somehow, most of it does.
McConaughey is operating in the sweet spot of what makes him so watchable. Amziah has the familiar drawl and easy charm, but Patterson writes him enough sadness and history that the performance never feels like McConaughey simply showed up wearing work boots and decided to McConaughey harder than usual.
There is actual weight behind the smile.
LookingGlass is just as important. She does not perform like someone begging the camera to notice her. She is quiet, observant and remarkably natural, which makes Kateri an effective counterbalance to the draw of a legendary actor standing next to her. Against an actor capable of turning the word “alright” into a trademark, that is no small achievement.
Kurt Russell also shows up with the wonderful economy of a veteran actor who understands that portraying a menacing character does not require a lot of over-the-top effort. He barely needs to raise his voice throughout the entire film, which is something we’re not used to seeing from him. He simply occupies the frame and lets his decades of movie history and his presence do some of the heavy lifting.
Where the film may lose a few people is its structure. Patterson is not terribly interested in staying in one lane. The movie can be funny, tender, strange and unexpectedly brutal within the same stretch of road. At times the episodic storytelling and heavy use of montage make parts of the film feel less precise than others. There are moments when you can practically feel the screenplay changing gears.
But I would rather watch a filmmaker occasionally grind through a transistion while trying to go somewhere interesting than another perfectly engineered piece of content designed to offend no one and disappear from memory.
That is ultimately what makes The Rivals of Amziah King work. It feels made by people who actually like these characters and respect the kind of life they live without judging them.
After the screening, McConaughey joined musicians from the film and played for the crowd downstairs. It was a fitting ending to an evening built around the strange path of a guy who once walked onto an Austin movie set for one scene and somehow never really left. The theater dedication celebrated McConaughey’s history with Austin.
The Rivals of Amziah King reminds us why the city wanted his name on the wall in the first place.
Final Verdict: 4.5/5
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