At no point during The Rivals of Amziah King, Andrew Patterson’s follow-up to his mesmerizing microbudget sci-fi movie Vast of Night, can you predict what will happen next. The film kicks off with a full-fledged musical number, in which a group of bluegrass band players all converge at a roadside fried steak sandwich shop, tuning their instruments and starting to play, one by one. The rapturous jam session has been going on for almost a full minute by the time its star player enters the scene, the camera holding on his battered cowboy boots, and panning up to the face that we know so well: that of Matthew McConaughey, all shining, earthy charisma. When he launches into a guitar solo, singing the folksy chorus alongside his bandmates, you can’t help but think, “Here’s the movie star we’ve been missing for six years.”
Yes, it has been six years since McConaughey last starred in a movie (Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen) — spending his last few years doing True Detective send-ups in Super Bowl commercials or considering running for office — and The Rivals of Amziah King feels like a long-awaited comeback. But apart from its clear adoration for its title star, McConaughey’s Amziah King, the film kind of defies description. It’s a bluegrass Western about a criminal conspiracy targeting beekeeping farms in rural Oklahoma. But it’s also a folksy drama about the found family surrounding the beloved Amziah King. And it also is kind of a revenge-thriller-meets-heist-caper. But to get into any more detail would be to reveal the brilliant rug-pull that The Rivals of Amziah King introduces nearly halfway through the film, which recontextualizes its whole story and sends you down an exhilarating genre-hopping journey.
