We meet Kenya (Mekonahi) who deals with family business related to mines. The story begins when Kenny touches the bottom – he has no job, he lost his house, he drinks a lot and lives with his girlfriend Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard), whose house is also mortgaged. During one night, he dreams of discovering gold in Indonesia, sells the last valuables and goes to the airport. In Jakarta, he meets Michael Acost (Edgar Ramírez), a famous geologist who became famous for discovering a large pool of gold, but now lives in dark days. The two of them decide to embark on this adventurous endeavor together…
What is immediately noticeable and remains so until the check-out rush is the fact that the film is based on the main actor and his physical transformation for this role, with an all-beer belly. The transformation is further evoked by the fact that Matthew appears in his first two scenes in his classic edition. However, even with a lot of extra pounds, Matthew has his charisma when presenting a character who is slowly turning from a personification of decay into a classic fool. What is also noticeable is that, apart from light adventurous fun without too many facts, this transition is not rich in content and lacks real drama.
McConaughey’s problem is that he has the task of interpreting a character who has no rational expectations, whose actions can be considered a failure almost in advance, and certain decisions border on idiocy. McConaughey did a great job, but the fact is that Kenny is not a nice character who can cause some sympathy in our country, especially when he becomes a jerk with an attitude that does nothing for money, but for his dream. His words that fame is more important than finding a huge gold mine than a large amount of money are simply absurd. Kenny is more pathetic than sympathetic and certainly not someone to watch carefully for two hours.
Before the start of the film, due to the fact that it was based on true events, I expected more facts and details related to the mining business and specifically this case, but it seemed that the screenwriters did not aim to present it. For a good three quarters of the film, we watch a man who, by coincidence, gets much more than he wants, only to become an even worse version of himself – it’s sad to see that someone’s commitment leads to success just to ruin pride. Everything in the film is seen through the prism of money – Kenya’s company is recording dizzying growth on the stock market, which again calls into question his words that not everything is in the money, although absolutely everything suggests that it is.
If I were to compare this film with someone else, it would certainly be The Wolf of Wall Street, which lacks the brilliance of Scorsese’s directing and screenwriting – as if the author’s trio were at the same time and wanted Gold to resemble that film, but also to fence from him. In both cases, the main character is an outsider, showing the gala life of instant rich people, controlled violence, a dose of humor and a general hunger for money. The film looks visually beautiful, it is excellently edited and the locations for filming in Thailand are a complete hit, but there is simply no material that would intrigue us more. According to the original idea, Michael Mann planned to make this film with Christian Bale in the lead role.
