The film 'The Rivals of Amziah King' reveals the dark side of the honey business: beekeepers steal from each other, poison rivals' bees, and rip people off. "It's not full of kind people," warns the title character. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.
The film itself is not as sweet as it thinks. Instead of picking a single genre, it blends Quentin Tarantino's sudden brutality, a coming-of-age tale, a heist flick, a revenge fantasy, and a music-filled country hoedown. Matthew McConaughey returns to the big screen in what can only be called Matthew-McConaughey-turned-up-to-11 mode: Cheshire Cat smile, rascally wink, buttery Southern charm. He makes everyone's life better just by showing up.
Written by Andrew Patterson and James Montague and directed by Patterson, the film follows McConaughey's honey-producing King in rural Oklahoma until he inexplicably leaves at the hour mark, handing off to Angelina LookingGlass in her film debut. King is ordering chicken fried steak sandwiches and cherry Cokes while playing banjo in a quartet when authorities need his help to find out who abandoned $250,000 worth of honey barrels on the road. Then someone gets a chunk of their skull ripped off in an industrial accident, and the plot shifts.
King connects with his former foster daughter (LookingGlass), teaching her local ways, life lessons, and beekeeping. Bees here represent community, sharing, and caring. Cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz's camera never settles: frozen shots, furious close-ups, quick cuts, quirky flashbacks, ethereal river sequences, and lingering poetic images of bees. Music supervisor Winslow Bright swamps scenes with loud choirs, banjo, and strings.
The film features great turns by Kurt Russell as a lethal local kingpin and Jake Horowitz as a former Marine who plans thefts with military precision. One brazen theft here is of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", highlighting how hard that film was to pull off. Patterson likes to remind viewers of his Oklahoma bona fides, but much of the overlong movie was shot in Alabama. This hints at what's wrong: it doesn't feel authentic. Forget honey, it leaves a vinegary taste.