Movie Review: Mud

3.5 stars out of 5

For us long-time Matthew McConaughey fans, there is an unspoken but teased-at subplot in Mud: Will he or won’t he take his shirt off? The shirt gets a lot of mentions. It’s a lucky shirt. It’s one of two things protecting him. He will not part with that shirt. But we McConheads know better, don’t we?

But don’t let all that distract you from another excellent performance from Mr. McConaughey. He takes his classic ultra-laid-back charmer and tweaks it just so: He’s desperate, he’s afraid, and maybe he’s a little bit bad.

As terrific as McConaughey is, the movie really belongs to young Tye Sheridan, who plays Ellis. He and BFF Neckbone (the also great Jacob Lofland) are classic small-town 14-year-olds and you totally believe them. Caught between the little-kid years but not yet ready to run with the big-dog teens. Early stirrings of feelings for girls. But still, the very best thing is going exploring with your buddy. In Stand by Me they went in search of a dead body; in Mud it’s a boat in a tree. And they get McConaughey in the bargain, intriguing guru or…?

That “boat in the tree” is the sort of quirky touch/representative image you might find in an excellent short story. And for a long time this film maintains a small, literary, coming-of-age feel. There’s much food for thought here: The idealized view of love held by a tween contrasted with the more complicated adult reality. The sweet and undeniable power of friendship. The search for father figures when real fathers aren’t around. Looking out for one another, always.

Reese Witherspoon is cast as a troubled hottie; she doesn’t get a whole lot to do but she pulls off the different look admirably. Boardwalk Empire fans get both Nelson Van Alden (the always highly watchable Michael Shannon) and Mickey “Heh-heh-heh” Doyle. For American Horror Story: Asylum buffs, there’s Lana Winters as Ellis’s mom, aching for change. Ray McKinnon, getting more press recently as the creator of Rectify on the Sundance Channel, is Ellis’s hard-luck-but-still-trying dad. I haven’t seen Sam Shepard in a long time and yikes, he got kind of old. Sure was a handsome bastard, wasn’t he?

Good work all around by writer/director Jeff Nichols. He makes the Arkansas working-river setting feel very, very real, and he elicits some very strong performances, especially from the two young men. The film unravels a bit toward the end, a little too much going on, some too-neat “if there’s a gun in the first act…” developments (except it isn’t a gun; well, there is a gun also), and things wrapping up a little too cleanly. But overall a nice piece of work and an environment I felt very comfortable in.