What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, but lose his hairline? Matthew McConaughey considers the question in “Gold,” which is in essence a vanity project about a vanity project.
The film is a sort of “Treasure of the Sierra McConaughey,” in which our Matthew plays Kenny Wells, a prospector with daddy issues. As Kenny’s business sinks into oblivion in the 1980s, he goes to Indonesia because of a (literal) dream: He guesses his friend Michael (Edgar Ramírez) will find a gold mine there.
This seems a thin business plan to pitch to potential investors, and one of the many failings of “Gold” (directed by Stephen Gaghan, who wrote “Traffic”) is that it keeps skipping over the hard parts, otherwise known as the interesting parts. How on earth could such a skeevy fellow as Kenny persuade backers to pony up actual money to finance his whim? There could be a movie in the answer to that question alone, but instead Gaghan simply hurries past the issue.
Next thing we know, Kenny is dazed by malaria in the Indonesian jungle when Michael, directing a small army of peasant workers, simply announces gold has indeed been found.
How does that happen? Again, the movie has next to nothing to say on the details, because “Gold” is designed less to tell a coherent story than it is to set up McConaughey for an Oscar nomination. Scene after scene is expended on McConaugHeroics — Kenny in conference rooms, Kenny in posh restaurants, Kenny at the New York Stock Exchange — always spouting football-coach aphorisms and looking greasy. McConaughey has noticed (who hasn’t?) that beautiful women keep winning Oscars for looking ugly, and he wants in. His male-pattern baldness highlighted by shaggy unkempt fringes, the whole mess of it styled with 10W-40, he looks like a guy who should be selling used Buicks to undocumented immigrants, and yet he becomes the toast of Wall Street, as personified by a sharky MBA type (Corey Stoll).
Characterized by a fitful, start-and-stop rhythm, this occasionally entertaining adventure is one of those “inspired by true events” boondoggles, which must have been financed by some Kenny Wells type who persuaded investors that a madcap “Wolf of Wall Street” tone would make his story irresistible.
I doubt it: Getting malaria doesn’t look like as much fun as getting wasted on quaaludes and crashing a Lamborghini. Besides, Kenny isn’t so much a charming rogue as he is a sweaty striver. A last-minute development that’s meant to put an exclamation point on things instead feels like a question mark. You leave the theater with a vague sense that your time could have been spent better elsewhere.