https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhYROWOayLw
Coming hard on the heels of last year’s The Founder, this robust but bumptious movie has continued with the resurrection of the ‘greed is good’ philosophy – or, as its protagonist Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey) argues, ‘When you’re making money, nobody gives a shit’.
Both films are outstanding studies of unbridled ambition, but each is burdened by an obnoxious central character. It was not impossible, however, to feel a little grudging sympathy for Michael Keaton’s Ray Kroc, for he was, in his own bent way, socially aware. Wells, on the other hand, is just a loud-mouthed bully who wants it all simply for the sake of having it all, rather like the new baby-man president. For him, the great American dream (can we please excise this expression from the lexicon, along with its Australian copy-cat?) is not about achievement, it is about winning at any cost.
Wells, a ‘prospector’, has seen the mining company inherited from his father decline to the point of near-insolvency. Desperate to save his business, he teams up with geologist Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez) for one last throw of the dice in the Indonesian jungle. They strike gold and Wells is as seduced by its lustre as were the Spanish conquistadors.
It is a fairly typical story of underdog makes good, but Wells is so gauche, so boorish and bad-tempered, that it is hard to care one way or the other if he succeeds. McConaughey, with a bald wig, a gut and saggy Y-fronts, is relentlessly in your face, chain-smoking and drinking whisky like there’s no tomorrow. His Wells is the classic ruffian whom I suspect we are meant to admire when he comes up against the smooth-talking suits of Wall Street. It is a brilliant performance, with Ramirez’s subtlety and calmness a perfect counterbalance, but Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard) is no more than the woman who stands by her man. The surprise that awaits Wells is perfectly concealed, and explained, but the concluding scene, devoid of any moral ‘rightness’, suggests he has learnt nothing.
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