The Rivals of Amziah King
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Angelina LookingGlass, Kurt Russell
Writer/Director: Andrew Patterson
Oklahoma’s prairies at first seem endlessly flat and boringly predictable – but anyone who lives there is well aware of the land’s rolling contours, its camouflaged ridges, its unexpected streams. Take the state’s deceptive sameness too lightly and you may well end up stuck in a ditch.
So it is with The Rivals of Amziah King, the Oklahoma-set story of a big-hearted bee keeper (Matthew McConaughey): Don’t be lulled by the film’s first 45 minutes, which aside from a momentarily harrowing industrial accident largely involve the lanky, loquacious Amziah jamming on the mandolin with his buddies at a drive-in barbeque joint, or kicking back at a church potluck social, or responding to a “bee emergency” at a local elementary school, or having a sweet reunion with a young woman named Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass), who he once took in as a foster child.
The initial tone is almost languid as, along with Kateri, we accompany Amziah on his honey-gathering rounds, lulled by McConaughey’s lilting voice as he narrates the social structure of the hive, the delicate intricacies of honey extraction, the fragile and all-too-easily disturbed balance between humans and nature.
Then, one morning, Amziah and Kateri discover that all his bees, hives and all, have been stolen by night. And just like that, what started out as something of a Terrence Malick idyll erupts into a Coen Brothers-like prairie fire of ruthless crime, sudden death, and cold-blooded revenge.
Kateri, thus far a wistfully nostalgic observer of Amziah’s life, becomes an ersatz crime investigator and, ultimately, Avenging Angel.
Oklahoma-born writer/director Andrew Patterson’s love for his home and its people is palpable. Even at the film’s most intense moments, Patterson never narrows his focus to the point where we lose sight of the tight-knit community surrounding Amziah and Kateri. One or two villains hover at the periphery, most notably a courtly criminal chillingly played by Kurt Russell. But everyone else – from the fast-food clerk who’s surprisingly deft at tracing license plates to the local police chief who sees crime as a relative matter – seems primarily concerned with determining, in all matters, what’s best for everybody, and then pursuing sometimes unconventional strategies to that end.
In a breakthrough performance, newcomer LookingGlass at first allows us to see Kateri the way Amziah does; as a wide-eyed, ever-smiling innocent who has, against all odds, emerged from a disastrous childhood to be a consummately balanced, all-American young woman. She turns out, of course, to be something much more complex than that, and LookingGlass masterfully pulls back Kateri’s layers to reveal each one in her own good time.
McConaughey had waited six years since his last big-screen starring role to take on the part of Amziah (Last year’s The Last Bus, which beat this movie to the screen, was filmed later). He clearly relishes the role, and the chance to sing and play mandolin with his talented costars. It must be noted that McConaughey – whose character is at one point virtually covered with crawling, buzzing bees – insisted on handling the bees himself, despite being reportedly allergic to bee stings. I hereby nominate him for the Academy Award for Stunt Design, which will be awarded for the first time next year.
This is only the second film for writer/director Patterson, but he proves to be a masterful storyteller, deftly negotiating one left turn after another, linking what could be considered three separate narratives into one cohesive film. Besides his stars, who obviously know a good thing when they see it, Patterson clearly had no trouble assembling a first-rate supporting cast including Scott Shepherd (Killers of the Flower Moon), Cole Sprouse (Riverdale), and Owen Teague (It).
One and all, the ensemble seamlessly shifts gears from comedy to concert film to high-stakes drama without once compromising the characters they play. Things may not always be what they seem, the film tells us, but people, well, they pretty much tip their hands from the get-go.
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