Today's Mini-Review: Mud

Mud: ****/*****, or 8/10

Gritty and stern coming-of-age drama set on the banks of the mighty Mississippi in a poor, rural community where you get nothing for free, love least of all. Young boys Ellis and Neckbone (marvelous acting from newcomers Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) try to make the best of a harsh life, having fun as well as their situation will allow them. Their latest find to ensure a good time: an abandoned boat swept into the treetops by a flood on a small, neglected river island. Soon someone else encroaches on this idyllic place of theirs though, a mysterious drifter named Mud (impeccable performance by Matthew McConaughey, almost making you forget the numerous lousy romcoms he has starred in in recent years by showing he can still do more demanding bits of acting). On the run from the police, Mud weaves a sympathetic tale of drama and romance which ensnares the boys into making a deal with this stranger: if they provide him with food, tools and information in his ploy to elope with his sweetheart Juniper (a battered but ever beautiful Reese Witherspoon), they can keep the boat, and, thrown in as a bonus, his gun. The boys swiftly find out Mud may be more dangerous than they at first anticipated, as his archenemy arrives in town wist a posse of bounty hunters, poised to kill their new secret associate at all costs. The audience has no illusions that Mud's stories about his life and situation are nowhere near the whole truth, if not a bunch of bald faced lies and baloney. But like the young protagonists, we cannot help but be entranced by Mud's Southern charm and seeming sincerity, especially when much of his wild tales seem to be verified as the film progresses. For Ellis, the love between Mud and Juniper is a refreshing taste of the good things in life he himself sorely lacks, as his own parents cannot get along and are moving increasingly towards a divorce which may end Ellis' life as he knows it, and not necessarily for the better. Just hitting puberty and taking his own first steps in the minefield that is love, Ellis so badly wants to believe in true love that will make people do anything to maintain it, he is blind to any hints that suggest Mud is nothing but a con man. Of course, things are indeed not as they seem, and everything points to Mud having used the boys for his own shady purposes. Despite the eventual exposure of his web of lies though, Mud gets his fair chance to redeem himself in the eyes of his former acolytes, as his nemesis and his band of brigands are moving in on him with no moral qualms of taking out anyone that has come to his aid of late, putting Ellis and Neckbone in grave danger too. A violent conclusion and an unavoidable number of deaths seems inescapable, and love seems unlikely to save the day as Ellis so firmly desired. Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) doesn't go easy on his juvenile main characters and adds plenty of misery and bad luck to their already hard life, shattering their illusions and dreams for the future, but never going so far as to eliminate hope entirely. A child's notions of love and life never quite come to fruition as it had expected, he states, but good things can still come from a bad situation in the long run (which does lead to a happy ending that cannot fully avoid a bit of sentimentality). His point is made with help of a great supporting cast of excellent actors, among them the likes of Sam Shepard, Paul Sparks and Michael Shannon (the latter both Boardwalk Empire veterans). Despite the hardships their characters suffer, the swamp lands surrounding the Mississippi that Nichols introduces us to remain a place of simple beauty and hopeful dreams that no violence, betrayal or lies can hurt. And those who hope for shirtless scenes of McConaughey, as is his routine he pulls one off (literally) in this film as well.

Today's Mini-Review: Riddick

Riddick: ***/*****, or 6/10

Belated third installment of the so-called 'Riddick trilogy', which started with the moderate hit Pitch Black (2000) and continued with the overly grandiose The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), like this film (which in some territories carries the ominous subtitle Dead Man Stalking) written and directed by David Twohy. Vin Diesel returns as the muscular Richard B. Riddick, a member of the enigmatic, near extinct humanoid race called Furyans that can see in the dark, is adept at survival against all odds and generally proves hard to kill. Nevertheless, Riddick's new army of followers he conquered at the end of the previous film tries to do just that, leaving him for dead on a barren world populated by all manner of vicious beasts, where he himself still reigns supreme as the most dangerous predator of all (as usual). Nevertheless, driven by his primal instinct to return to his homeworld, Riddick decides to let his continued existence be known via an emergency beacon on a vacant outpost, after which two different teams of bounty hunters arrive to hunt him down. One of these is out solely for money, with the clear intent of 'ghosting' their prey as he's worth twice as much dead as he is alive, while the other is on a mission of a more personal nature, led by a father who believes he once lost his son at Riddick's cold hands. The latter team also comes with Katee Sackhoff, almost reprising her seminal role as Battlestar Galactica's Starbuck playing a tough woman who takes crap from no man and is fully able to defend herself from everybody who dares to try. Gratifying as it is to see Sackhoff can still balance smart, strong and sexy, her character proves fairly redundant as she has no singular action scenes of her own, save for a brief suspenseful shower sequence, while she's plagued by being the butt of sexually intimidating jokes for most of the film. After Riddick has outwitted and caused the deaths of half of the men out for his head, as well as having made off with vital starship components which prevent the teams from leaving, he successfully convinces them to seize hostilities for a while as a huge storm front is sweeping over their heads and brings forth great scores of hungry carnivores that want a piece of all of them. Soon, it seems as though even Riddick will not make it out alive this time, but we as an audience know better of course.

For those who watched the trailer and wondered how the heck Riddick went from being a virtual emperor of the galaxy at the end of Chronicles of to a lone survivor on a desolate world at the start of Riddick, a narrative connection between the events of this film and its predecessor is all too briefly incorporated, as we are treated to seeing Karl Urban's Lord Vaako again for less than 60 seconds of screen time (a waste of a terrific actor!), despite the suggestion that the information he relays is crucial in some way: it would appear Twohy still has some sort of big pay-off in mind to close off what he started in the second film, but appearently he either didn't have the inspiration or the budget to treat that specific subject in this film, necessitating him to return to the tone and substance of the original. It all proves overly familiar territory, and often feels very much like an uninspired retread of Pitch Black, which also witnessed Riddick making an unlikely alliance with his enemies in order to escape the jaws and clutches of hordes of creepy creatures out for human blood on an inhospitable planet. Problem is, though Riddick ends up a fairly entertaining popcorn flick (especially for those who are new to the franchise), Pitch Black did it all better. It had more original visual design, less obvious digital monsters and made the character of Riddick feel more menacing and alien, while at this point we know exactly what to expect from his persona: a limited vocabulary, general growling and the usual bloodshed of (mostly unlikeable) characters standing in his way. Riddick sadly remains a one-note character played by an equally one-note actor. Now that Twohy has displayed there's just little more he can do with the Riddick character and the latter's coolness factor has decidedly worn off, this may be a good time to put an end to this franchise that so clearly was never meant to be a franchise, Twohy's hints at a fourth film not withstanding.