REVIEW: The Rivals of Amziah King

The first note I made for this film is that I knew a bunch of cowboys growing up. But I regretfully did not know any who were just so willing to burst into song.

I thought then that I knew what I was getting into with this movie. But I could not anticipate what this story would try to feed me.

The movie sees Amziah King, a good-natured beekeeper, smalltown musician, and all-around good dude, sorting through some business deals as he happens to reunite with his former foster-daughter, Kateri. Crossing paths again allows them to mutually rediscover what they gave to each other as two people who lifted each other up. But when King's entire stock is stolen at the worst possible moment, Kateri gets to step-up and defend what is theirs.

Amziah King is McConaughey at his most endearing. His ability to put the viewer at ease is the film's greatest trick. I've heard some buzz about this being his best performance ever. I'd be inclined to entertain these thoughts, but ... I really liked him in Mud.

Angelina LookingGlass spends the first half of the film playing like a sort of unblemished jewel that's dropped into this untamed space--revealing and reflecting the beauty of her new environment, yet somehow remaining separate from it. Though her character has specific roots to Amziah King, she is a sort of welcome outsider here. Come the midpoint shuffle, though, her role evolves as we see Kateri proving herself in new territory, and LookingGlass steers this Christmas ornament of a person into something raw and earthy. If McConaughey is this film's beacon, LookingGlass is the secret weapon, and I genuinely hope we get to see more from her going forward.

Again, I thought I knew what this movie was selling early on: this was going to be a document of little but earnest people surviving as they leaned on each other and persisted against towering but ultimately vulnerable opponents. For the first half of the story, the film not only accomplishes that, but excels at it. The film's portrait of the highs and lows of grassroots goodness winds up being colorful without feeling gaudy--honest without being crass.

But the film morphs into something very different midway through. And I don't just mean its conversion into a more sinister crime-thriller. I'm referring mostly to the strange shift in the movie's moral code. I'm being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers, but the narrative becomes suspiciously permissive of ethical shortcuts that accord with neither standing expectations with dealing with your enemies nor the code of the amicable musician at the center of this movie.

Don't get me wrong. Flawed decisions and ethical dilemmas can be tasty things. I am one of those weirdos who is just nourished by the moral dilemma in something like Passengers. But despite that movie's violent reception, it came with considerably more internal examination than this film affords. About three-quarters in, I was choking on the prospect of feeling like the honey-colored photography and impromptu musical numbers were working much like propaganda, and the review I had wanted to write for the first two-thirds of this movie started to decay in me.

And I suppose that the film's jarring shift does not negate all its victories from the first half, and I suppose from the second half as well. It does, however, invent an unnecessary conflict in the viewer. Seeing the film reject its fate--as this exalting of a small slice of smalltown America as a harbor for kindness and community--and choose instead to dive somewhat recklessly into moral waters it doesn't really want to scout, it's just a little bit infuriating.

This film isn't Passengers. Neither is it Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It's The Godfather, but I'm not sure it knows that it is.

--The Professor

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