Mud **** (2012, Matthew McConaughey, Reese Withersoon, Tye Sheridan, Sam Shepard, Joe Don Baker) – Movie Review

The Matthew McConaughey renaissance continues with this, quite probably his best ever performance, as a spectacularly grungy-looking fugitive hiding away alone on a Mississippi isolated island after killing the husband who was abusing his lover. An abandoned boat, suspended on a tree by a flood, might provide his getaway chance.

Excellent though McConaughey is, he has competition from a kid – Tye Sheridan, playing one of two 14-year-old boys who stumble across and befriend him and then agree to be a go-between with the lover, taking letters to her. But, as even the kids are canny enough to know, this is a dangerous, possibly lethal game. The police are after McConaughey’s character Mud, but much, much worse, McConaughey’s redneck ex-father-in-law (Joe Don Baker) has formed a posse to kill him.

The boys (especially Sheridan’s character Ellis) want to help him, and there are two possible little rays of sunshine in the Mississippi landscape for Mud, his very old buddy Sam Shepard and his lover Reese Witherspoon. Quite a nice set-up, don’t you think?

This, then, is another epic thriller, taken in a long and winding way by writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories). That might suggest a lack of urgency in the story telling, but not so. The direction’s as compelling as the script is riveting.

And the Mississippi atmosphere is brilliantly realised, you can just smell it coming off the screen. Despite hints of other, long-ago classic movies (The Go-Between, Whistle Down the Wind), the story comes up fresh and new, allowing it effortlessly to overcome the odd plot improbability. But then it’s not so much about plot as character.

And that’s where the actors come in. McConaughey truly nails it (it’s hard to imagine anyone else being in the role let alone being better) and Sheridan’s so accomplished for an actor quite so young and inexperienced. Jacob Lofland has less to do as the other, younger kid, and is therefore slightly less effective, but excellent anyway.

I’d love to have seen more of Baker, Shepard and Witherspoon, and in such a long (130-minute) film you’d think I could have done. With what they’ve got, they’re very good, but they are side issues, just texture on the screen canvas. It’s all about Mud and the kid, as the movie climaxes with Sheridan being bitten by a deadly cottonmouth snake. (Wow, life’s hard on the Mississippi!)

Obviously, Mud’s a selfish son-of-a-gun, isn’t he? Well, no he isn’t tha t’s why he’s got himself as a fugitive stuck on a deserted island in the first place. A killer with a moral dimension. All set for a happy ending then? My lips are sealed.

McConaughey looks like he could do with a good bath and a shampoo and set throughout the film, but, don’t worry, he takes his (impressively dirty) shirt off yet again, warming up no doubt for Magic Mike 2. (In the event, he won an Oscar and didn’t do the Mike sequel).

Mud is a graceful and haunting film that will stay in the mind when all the blockbusters are long forgotten.

 © Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com