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There's a place where the river opens up into the whole wide world. When you reach it, the horizon expands to infinity, and everything ahead looks impossibly big and uncharted.  Jeff Nichols ' "Mud," a Mississippi River coming-of-age story, takes place on that threshold, down in the delta where innocence and experience, the past and the future, all run together like dirt and water. 

It starts off as a boy's adventure story, in the dark of a kid's bedroom. Equipped with a walkie-talkie and a flashlight, 14-year-old Ellis ( Tye Sheridan ) sneaks out the window of a ramshackle house built on the water. On his way past the kitchen, he stops briefly to listen in on some curt and cryptic talk between his parents before heading out into the darkness, where he and his friend Neckbone ( Jacob Lofland ) navigate the winding waterways in a small outboard-powered skiff.

When they arrive at that natural gateway, we first see it reflected in their awestruck faces. Then we see the mighty river they're about to enter. Downstream there's a small island where they've spotted a tiny blue and white wooden cabin cruiser that floodwaters have lifted up into a tree. (You may remember the image from another river journey: Werner Herzog ’s " Aguirre, the Wrath of God .") To them, it's a ready-made treehouse, but what they discover (along with a stash of Penthouse magazines, some cans of Van Camp's Beanee Weenee, a package of sliced bread and a few other provisions) is that somebody's already living there.

His name is Mud, and he embodies many connotations of that word: coarse, mucky, disreputable, opaque, unstable, common as dirt. Mud ( Matthew McConaughey ) beguiles the boys with colorfully embroidered origin-stories about his snake tattoo, his lucky shirt, the crosses on the heels of his seven-league boots and a long-ago bite from an Edenic serpent that almost killed him, right here on this very stretch of river. Most of these personal legends can be traced back to the one unshakable verity of his life: Juniper ( Reese Witherspoon ), his first and only true love since childhood. 

The hints of violence in Mud's murky past, and the pistol tucked in the back of his jeans, make him a little scary, and thus all the more charismatic to the boys. He's the dangerous dog that won't let anybody else approach, but flatters the kids with his acceptance and trust. Given that Ellis' parents are on the verge of splitting and Neckbone is being raised by a feckless, scatterbrained uncle, it doesn't hurt that Mud, an adult male, gives them attention and advice that makes them feel needed and important.

For Ellis and Neck, Mud is also a romantic figure. They sympathize with his devotion to Juniper because they're just now taking their own early, uncertain steps in the sticky terrain of love and courtship. Mud persuades the boys to help him — first with food and supplies, later with the herculean task of getting the boat out of the branches and into the water so he and Juniper can float off to an outlaw fairy-tale happily ever-after. 

The great American literary critic Leslie Fiedler said: "To be an American (unlike being English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history." That could be the inscription on this film. Writer-director Nichols, who also made " Shotgun Stories " (2007) and " Take Shelter " (2012), works in that American tradition. He has a rare ability to root his archetypal Southern fables in rich observational detail. They remain tangibly specific but take on the larger resonances of folklore. 

"Mud" runs deep with undercurrents from American movies and literature: " Tom Sawyer ," "Huckleberry Finn," " The Night of the Hunter ," " To Kill a Mockingbird ," "Moby Dick," " Cool Hand Luke ," the films of Nichols' fellow Austin-resident   Terrence Malick (" Badlands ," " Days of Heaven ," " The Tree of Life "). But the picture never comes unmoored from reality or drifts off into lazy abstraction and cliché. Nichols' eye for particulars, his feel for the characters and landscapes (and waterscapes), is so vivid you feel you could get bit by a mosquito or a water moccasin if you're not careful. 

Adam Stone's luminous widescreen photography and David Wingo's acoustic swamp music also have a lot to do with that, and so does the casting. McConaughey is on a roll, and this part, which Nichols wrote for him, is the strongest and most subtle lead performance of his career. (Could this be what becomes of Wooderson after he stops messing around with high school girls?) Even better, if that's possible, is young Sheridan ( Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain's youngest son in " The Tree of Life "), whose first kiss with a slightly older girl (two grades?) at a beach bonfire is so flawlessly rendered it already feels like it came from a classic movie.

American icon Sam Shepard , another Malick veteran, appears as a houseboat hermit sporting Billy Bob Thornton 's haircut from " Sling Blade ." Michael Shannon , the magnetic star of Nichols' previous pictures, effortlessly steals scenes as Neck's slacker-diver uncle. (A detail: When we meet Neck he's wearing a faded hand-me-down Fugazi T-shirt that suggests he must live with an older brother or male relative. The moment we see the inside of Uncle Galen's trailer, we have a pretty good idea of where it came from.)  

And while Ellis looks like a cross between Atticus Finch's kids Scout and Jem (Mary Badham and Phillip Alford) in Robert Mulligan's " To Kill a Mockingbird ," Neckbone is the perfect fusion of River Phoenix and Jerry O'Connell in "Stand by Me." The resonances are all around.

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Rated PG-13 for some violence, sexual references, language, thematic elements and smoking.

130 minutes

Matthew McConaughey as Mud

Tye Sheridan as Ellis

Jacob Lofland as Neckbone

Michael Shannon as Galen

Sam Shepard as Tom Blankenship

Reese Witherspoon as Juniper

• Jeff Nichols

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Bolstered by a strong performance from Matthew McConaughey in the title role, Mud offers an engaging Southern drama that manages to stay sweet and heartwarming without being sappy.

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Jeff Nichols

Matthew McConaughey

Tye Sheridan

Jacob Lofland

Reese Witherspoon

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Review: ‘Mud’ is a triumph for Matthew McConaughey, Jeff Nichols

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“Do you love her?”

Wistful and hoping for a yes, the rough-hewn Arkansas boy who asks that question can’t quite hold the gaze of the stranger, but his voice is insistent.

The question comes early in “Mud” and will haunt the 14-year-old and the movie until the final frame.

The answer — to what loving means, to how urgent it feels the first time, to how easily it can slip away, like the Mississippi River that runs through this tale — is wily and willful.

MOVIE REVIEWS: Latest reviews from The Times

The movie itself, filled with miscreants, mysteries, a scandalous hero named Mud and a couple of boys as headstrong as Huck Finn, is one of the most creatively rich and emotionally rewarding movies to come along this year.

The boy named Ellis, portrayed by young Tye Sheridan, who first turned up in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” will ask about love many times over the course of the film. He will press his father, Senior (Ray McKinnon), his mother, Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson), a bad-luck beauty named Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), his first girlfriend May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant), even the local recluse Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard). But Ellis will keep coming back to that stranger — Mud (Matthew McConaughey) — who seems to know more than most about life and loving.

Mud is a romantic on the run that Ellis and his best friend, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), stumble across when they go to investigate a boat lodged high in a tree by some angry, earlier storm. It’s on a spit of sand that passes for an island in the middle of the Mississippi, not too far from one of the houseboat shanties that hug the river’s edge. Passed down from one generation to the next, it’s where Ellis has grown up and tells us everything we need to know about how precarious things are for him.

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The boys’ investigation of the boat leads to the discovery of the man. Ellis is curious, Neckbone is wary. Bit by bit their prodding pulls the story out of Mud.

His murder of a Texas man in a quarrel over Juniper is what has him hiding. That death has dogged him like the bounty hunters paid for by the man’s father (Joe Don Baker) and the lawmen who are drawing closer. He’s hungry. He needs to get a letter to Juniper. Will they help?

Much turns on the clandestine adventure that follows, the boys’ excitement at being a part of it doing much to buoy the film. Besides, if Ellis believes anything, it is that Mud loves Juniper and Ellis is clearly moved by love.

With matted hair, a cracked front tooth, sun-browned skin and blues eyes sparking mischief, McConaughey beautifully articulates with his honeyed drawl the very essence of a grizzled, determined romantic. It is the best work of the actor’s career, though virtually everyone in the film turns in sensitively drawn performances, particularly the boys.

If you don’t know the name Jeff Nichols — if the writer-director’s singular voice, fierce and fearful in 2011’s “Take Shelter,” somehow eluded your notice — make note of it now. “Mud” should securely anchor this rising tide as a distinctive talent to remember.

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Nichols is made in America, a storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain, uncanny in the way he understands human nature, inventive in spinning that into a movie. There is an ease with which Nichols pokes around in people’s lives, unearthing small truths in authentic ways. In “Mud,” it feels as if he’s caught a small slice of backcountry soul like a firefly in a jar.

For such a spare film, “Mud” is dense with details. Ellis’ father, Senior, peddles his daily catch door to door, his marriage is disintegrating, and he doesn’t understand why. It’s all sketched out in a few scenes, sometimes just shadows in the next room and tense exchanges that Ellis overhears.

Neckbone helps out his uncle Galen (a mellow Michael Shannon rather than his apocalyptical worrier of “Take Shelter”). Galen spends a good part of his days under water, scouring the river channels for oysters. He wears a wet suit — all the time — and when he’s working he adds what looks to be the top half of some old deep-sea diving gear he picked up at a Jules Verne scrap sale.

But like everything else about “Mud,” the diving gear, the broken-down houseboats, the weathered skiff the boys use to navigate the Mississippi, seem specific to the moment. Nichols takes care not to repeat himself, though he does hold his friends close — Shannon’s been in all three of his films, and director of photography Adam Stone and others have helped in creating a recognizable style for each one.

MORE: Latest film reviews from The Times

Ellis and Neckbone are soon spending their days scavenging parts to help Mud ready the boat for the great escape and ferrying notes to Juniper, a long-legged mess in cutoffs. Witherspoon gives her character a lazy languor that is seductive in the Mississippi heat. Whether nursing a beer or tossing that long blond mane, it’s easy to imagine men falling for her.

Ellis is trying his hand at romance too, with a younger version of Juniper in May Pearl. His introduction is a swift upper cut to the chin of a rival who’s bothering her. All the while, the bounty hunters are gathering. State troopers are closing roads. Tom Blankenship, who’s got a long history and limited patience with Mud, gets involved. And Juniper remains as much of an enigma as love itself.

As Nichols stirs things up, everything that Ellis has been aching to understand will get tested. Each of the characters we’ve met along the way will be tried and found worthy, or not. Lives are in jeopardy, and there is a snake pit you will never forget. Though nothing is guaranteed, in Nichols’ sure hands you know it will be an exceptionally fine ending when it finally comes along.

MPAA rating: PG-13 for some violence, sexual reference, language, thematic elements and smoking

Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes

Playing: In general release

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Movie Review: Mud (2012)

• Movie Reviews
• 2 responses
• --> April 25, 2013

Hatching a plan.

Set on a mighty river in rural Arkansas, Mud tells the story of teenage boys Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) forming an unlikely bond with a mysterious fugitive called, Mud (Matthew McConaughey). Exploring the forest to see if the recent flood really did leave a boat up in a tree, they find not only the boat, but a mud-covered convict, who regales them with fanciful tales of his lady love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) and the rapscallion that he murdered in order to avenge her honor. He and Juniper are deeply in love, he claims, and as soon as he gets the boat fixed up the two of them are going to sail away together to the great blue sea. All he has to do is not fall in the hands of his victim’s bounty hunting brothers, and get a little help from the boys in acquiring the necessary materials in town.

Neckbone is skeptical, conceding only in exchange for Mud’s prized pistol, but Ellis agrees right away. With his parents on the brink of divorce and his heart set on his own little lady in town, he sees Mud’s fractured relationship with Juniper as a way of proving to himself and the world that true love does exist, even though the obligatory old wise man in the movie tells Ellis that Mud has a habit of fabricating and Juniper has a habit of sleeping around (the “Liar and the Tramp,” a classic American love story), even though Ellis’ love interest is clearly ambivalent about being his girlfriend, even though his dad warns him that you can’t trust people and loving a woman isn’t worthwhile (if you think you know where this is all going, then you’re very right).

Ultimately, this is a coming-of-age story, one whose ending we know all too well, about how much it hurts when someone you love doesn’t love you back, and how much it hurts even when they do. And the title, Mud presumably alludes to the statement the movie makes about human nature, the way we’re all an indivisible mixture of good and bad substances, some part water and some part dirt.

You also know it’s a serious movie from the beginning because Matthew McConaughey is actually (usually) wearing a shirt, and the shirt, in fact, takes on some sort of magical realistic powers, sort of as a symbol of living up to people’s expectations, of doing the right thing, of giving up the only thing you have (literally the shirt off your back) for the people you love, ending up with nothing and starting all over again. The role suits McConaughey well, as he’s good at playing that charming, rugged, equivocal Southerner who you know you shouldn’t trust but kinda want to anyway. Reese Witherspoon’s acting talents are wasted a bit in her stock character, and there’s only one scene, in which she and Mud stare at each other over the great divide of a motel parking lot, that actually makes use of her considerable emotional oeuvre. The real breakout star here, without doubt, is Tye Sheridan, whose silent response to the moment he realizes all the harsh realities of young love is enough to make you want to drown in a lake from sorrow.

Object of affection.

Mud was a hit at Sundance, and it’s plain as water to see why. Nichols employs all of the film techniques that critics love: Slow pacing, fleshed out relationships, complex but sympathetic characters, an exploration of the light and dark elements of human nature, gorgeous shots of pastoral scenes, minimal dialogue, brilliant acting, and coming-of-age themes that never grow old. Furthermore, the film is as American as the can of baked beans that Mud digs into by his campfire, with its Southern drawls, its stoic cowboy masculinity, its vivid snapshot of life on a swamp in rural Arkansas, and its overt homage to Huckleberry Finn and the American cinematic tradition.

But, for the average viewer, Mud might seem a bit like listening to your grandpappy tell the same story over and over again as you nod your head politely as though you haven’t heard it a million times. Sure, it’s sweet and sincere and heroic and heartfelt. But it’s also a little boring and predictable and really rural, kind of like . . . well, kind of like mud.

Tagged: criminal , island , love , pact

Diana Bruk is a freelance writer living in NYC. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and completed a Masters in Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford. She writes regularly for MTV Voices, Examiner.com, and Brooklyn Exposed, as well as others. You can find more of her work at www.dianabruk.com .

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'Movie Review: Mud (2012)' have 2 comments

April 25, 2013 @ 8:04 pm Leon Durkin

I prefer McConaughey in these smaller indie films. He was especially good in Killer Joe.

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April 30, 2013 @ 3:02 pm MJ Gator

McConaughey’s best.

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‘Mud’ (2013) Movie Review

By Brad Brevet

In 2008, when Matthew McConaughey reunited with his How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days co-star Kate Hudson for Fool’s Gold , would anyone have ever thought five years later he’d be starring opposite Reese Witherspoon in a film that would have people chanting, for the second year in a row, “Give that man an Oscar nomination!”? Yet, that’s where we stand as the opinion of McConaughey is no longer that of the shirtless rom-com lead, but instead as a bonafide actor whose schtick is now as dramatically compelling as it was once comically cliche.

McConaughey, however, is not the only star that shines in writer/director Jeff Nichols ‘ Mud . In fact, I’d say a lot of the time he’s overshadowed by his younger co-star Tye Sheridan in only his second film since Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life .

Set in the damp reaches of Arkansas, the film follows two adventurous young boys, Ellis (Sheridan) and Neckbone ( Jacob Lofland ), who happen across a man by the name of Mud (McConnaughey) hiding out on a small island in the Mississippi. Intrigued by the stranger that talks of killing a man for the one he loves ( Reese Witherspoon ) and his plan to be reunited with her, Ellis and Neckbone decide to help him out with food and spare parts to get an abandoned boat running for Mud and his girlfriend to escape the authorities on his trail.

Struggling with parents ( Ray McKinnon and Sarah Paulson ) that fight at home and an unguided journey through adolescence, Ellis begins looking up to Mud as something of a father figure, but come the end of this story perhaps Mud will have learned just as much as, if not more. The two characters are virtually one and the same, meeting at a crossroads in life where things can only get worse before they get any better.

Nichols infuses the film with a sense of childlike wonder. A boat stuck in a tree is just as cool to a pair of 14 year-olds as it is to the adult in their midst. “A hell of a thing,” Mud says over and over as he admires the boat above and tells the boys about the two things that serve as his protection in life — his gun and his shirt — and you begin to wonder just how much of his own bullshit Mud begins to believe.

The myth Mud creates comes to surface as trouble befalls Ellis and Mud quickly rushes to his aid, but not before grabbing his shirt off a hanging branch and throwing it on as he runs to the rescue. Nichols makes a point to capture this moment in the story as if Mud believes this shirt to be some sort of cape worn by a superhero, but I was never quite sure if this was a statement being made by the director or the revelation of an insecurity in the character. Of course, the obvious answer would be to say the guy simply didn’t want to ride into town without a shirt on, but the emphasis Nichols places on the moment would suggest otherwise.

There are many ways to read the moment I just described, another would be to say when the time comes a true man does what need be done in a responsible manner. You stop selfishly playing in the sun and taking advantage of others, put your shirt on and take action. The film plays heavy on this idea of responsibility, being a man and being a father. Another father figure in the film is played by the great Sam Shepard whose love for what amounts to an adopted son in Mud forces him to protect the one he loves no matter the circumstances and another still in Joe Don Baker , but I’m not about to give away the whole story.

Mud runs the gamut of responsibility from the examples I’ve already mentioned to that of Galen, Neckbone’s uncle (played by Michael Shannon ), who’s both inattentive and yet has found a balance raising Neckbone. Galen is hardly a father to Neckbone as much as he’s a trusted and trust ing caregiver. Their relationship is far from ideal when looked at from a parenting standpoint, which only adds to the collage Nichols paints on screen.

Mud does run into length issues as it never felt it deserved to be 130 minutes long. Perhaps that’s because I never felt Witherspoon’s character found much of a place in the film and the time spent focused on Ellis’ bickering parents came about once too often. That said, my troubles with the length in the narrative came midway through rather than near the end. Nichols finds a satisfying way of wrapping this story up of a man named Mud that becomes every bit a man as he is a myth and a legend to the two boys that came to know, help and learn from his situation.

14 years old is an impressionable age, but in Mud it shows that some parts of us have a hard time growing up and its just as important to embrace our childhood as it is to let it go and learn to grow up to become a man. Responsibility is a hell of a thing, but it’s important not only to those around us, but to ourselves. Forced to grow up too soon, Ellis was looking for someone to love and believe in. He got every bit he was looking for and Mud got more than he bargained for.

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'Mud' movie review: Matthew McConaughey is exceptional in Jeff Nichols' gritty, authentic drama

• Published: Apr. 26, 2013, 12:00 p.m.

Matthew McConaughey stars in "Mud."

• John Serba | [email protected]

Ellis believes in love. He’s 14, and a sweet, adventurous kid. His romanticism is a bright spot among the rural blight of his hometown, De Witt, Arkansas, and therefore in

a gritty drama filtered through his perspective.

FILM REVIEW

'Mud'

4 stars (out of 4)

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence, sexual references, language, thematic elements and smoking

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Reese Witherspoon

Director: Jeff Nichols

Run time: 130 minutes

See it: Now showing in limited release

It might be too easy to say that “Mud” is about the loss of Ellis’ innocence. The film is too astute to make concise statements about the nature of such things. It’s named after a derelict character who has earned his nickname by showing a purity of spirit that, for better or worse, sometimes supersedes morality. The movie does not exist to clarify, but to philosophize.

Just as Mud and Ellis share a romantic ideal, the characters are played with great authenticity by Matthew McConaughey and Tye Sheridan, respectively. Mud lives alone on a wooded island, in a boat stuck high up in a tree. During one of their playful explorations along the river, Ellis and his best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) discover the bizarre curiosity that is the boat, and eventually encounter Mud, who seems threatening and inviting at the same time. He’s hungry and desperate, and keeps a pistol tucked into the back of his pants. He asks the boys to help with his predicament.

The film slowly reveals who Mud is. He toes the line between good and bad influence for Ellis and Neckbone. He says he's waiting for the love of his life, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), so they can be together. In a riff on "Fitzcarraldo," he wants to lower the boat from the tree, repair it and get away. He's hiding in the woods because he's a fugitive – from the authorities, and from a group of thugs who want him dead. Mud has a righteous, and bloody, story for why he's in this jam. Sometimes, he shoots straight, and other times, he seems to stretch the truth.

Ellis takes him at face value. He feels he has to embrace the idea of Mud’s purist ideals. The rest of Ellis’ world is harsh and cynical: His parents are splitting up. He spends his days helping his father make a hard living, catching crawfish from the river and delivering them to stores and restaurants. The girl he likes is affectionate one day, and cold the next. Ellis is innocent, but worldly, and yearns for something to believe in. Neckbone is Ellis’ friendly foil - with a name like that, it’s no surprise he’s a pragmatist. In Mud, Ellis sees a man in need, where Neckbone sees the potential for danger.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols writes characters with depth, nurtures strong performances form his cast and allows the screenplay’s backwater setting to effectively create tone and texture. There’s a whiff of mysticism in the air of this damp, murky world, populated with writhing pools of poisonous cottonmouths. The mysterious figure at the center of the story, Mud represents the place spiritually and physically – he’s as much a superstitious sort as he is a man of practical means. He’s a survivalist who says he only needs his shirt and his gun, but who also carves crosses in his bootheels so his footprints will keep bad spirits away.

McConaughey's performance is exceptional, his strongest performance yet in a recent creative resurgence including "Magic Mike" and "The Lincoln Lawyer" (he'll next work with Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan). This is not to overlook young Sheridan, who shows the same natural gifts in front of the camera as he did in "The Tree of Life." The director mixes in strong supporting characters for Witherspoon, Michael Shannon, Sam Shepard, Joe Don Baker, Sarah Paulson and Ray McKinnon, who make the most of their screen time with sincerity or compelling eccentricity.

Nichols is an extraordinary filmmaker. With “Mud” and its predecessor, 2011’s “Take Shelter,” he exhibits an eye for detail and character that elevates his work from merely absorbing to intent, meaningful literary drama. He blends myth and realism seamlessly into his storytelling, which shows a rich, but subtle vein of provocation and surrealism. We should eagerly anticipate his next effort.

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Culture | Film

Mud - film review

It would be difficult to make the Arkansas Delta look less than beautiful. The challenge for director Jeff Nichols is its grungy inhabitants. At the centre of his story he has two young boys and the man they befriend, called Mud. Dirtied up and tousle-haired as he is for the title role, Matthew McConaughey is still a fine figure of a man.

He is, in fact, an outlaw, hiding out on a deserted island on the Mississippi because he shot dead his girlfriend’s abusive husband. Now the boys take letters between the lovers as Mud’s former father-in-law hires a posse to kill him. In recompense for the older boy’s efforts on his behalf, Mud saves him when he is bitten by a deadly cottonmouth snake, and risks capture by taking him to hospital.

This is a film that gives McConaughey the chance to be an actor rather than a star, and, not for the first time, he grabs the opportunity. So do Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland as the boys. In support, Sam Shepard and Reese Witherspoon, as Mud’s old friend and his girl, also put in impeccable performances.

To say this goes well with the scenery suggests a very watchable film. And so it is, though the long and winding storytelling almost matches the placid waters of the Mississippi itself. What we get is an eloquent coming-of-age epic mixed with a kind of rustic tall story-cum-thriller.

Nichols’s previous films, Take Shelter and Shotgun Stories, were less lyrical than this, which includes the line: “This river brings a lot of trash down with it. You gotta know what’s worth keeping and what’s worth letting go.” An Arkansas man himself, the director, who also wrote the screenplay, seems to know exactly what he is talking about.

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Movie Review: ‘Mud’

2011 was the breakout year for writer/director Jeff Nichols. His film, Take Shelter , received a lot of critical notice (deservedly so) and cinephiles probably wondered whether he could follow it up adequately. Audiences wouldn’t have to wait too long, as he’s back now with Mud .

Although the movie does include Michael Shannon (marking the third collaboration between the actor and Nichols), he plays a supporting character this time around. It’s Matthew McConaughey that takes top billing, as a mysterious man befriended by two kids in a small town along the Mississippi river. He’s there to meet up with the love of his life (Reese Witherspoon), only there are some people who’d like to get their hands on him for a previous misdeed and all parties involved realize she’s the bait for a deadly trap.

That’s … a really odd synopsis … but I don’t want to give everything away and of more importance than the traditional plot development is the kind of exploration Nichols is attempting. Sure, there’s the dramatic tension and cat & mouse games being played by McConaughey and most of the adults but all of that is structure for the manner in which father/son relationships are being examined.

The true protagonist of the movie is Tye Sheridan, a decent kid just trying to find his way in life; balancing both remarkable compassion and a gigantic desire to prove himself. He wants what most teenage boys want, some adventure and to be in a relationship with that hot girl a few years ahead of them in school. His best friend (Jacob Lofland) goes by the moniker Neckbone and the pair gallivant around and act like kids their age are supposed to act. Their discovery of an abandoned boat, and McConaughey nearby, steer them into a world beyond their years but they’re eager to impress this straight-talker who treats them like adults and help a woman seemingly in need of help; quickly finding themselves over their head in the process.

All of the performances, especially that of Sheridan, Lofland, and McConaughey, are excellent. Nichols really understands the locale in which he’s placed these characters and everything feels remarkably authentic. Had there not been a significant number of well-known actors, this could almost have passed at times for a documentary of life in the region. The cinematography is superb, and many of the scenes involving cruising down the river are so well shot that it almost felt like 3D (just without any of the hassle of those tinted glasses and general failure accompanied by the technology at the moment).

It’s understandable that some audiences may find the pacing a bit on the slow side but rather than stemming from a place of indecision, it’s clear that Nichols is in control of the proceedings and is just allowing the environment and characters within it to soak into your own psyche. His treatment of so many different father/son relationships is spectacular. Rather than feeling forced or like not enough time was devoted to any one set of characters, the end result is a tapestry of character studies and encompasses so many different approaches to how the dynamic works.

Simply put, Mud is easily one of the best films I’ve seen in 2013, and my esteem only grew as time passed between the screening and when I wrote this review. It will likely remain on my radar come awards season and audiences more interested in delving into the characters and appreciating good filmmaking than car chases and explosions should definitely check this out. Even though it’s not a big budget film and the story itself can be enjoyed in the comfort of your own home, it’s shot so beautifully that the trip to the theaters is worth the effort and expense. But no matter where you see it, the important thing is that you do … as long as you like quality movies. Otherwise, I’m sure there’s another Michael Bay film in the works that you can see with your brain safely in the off position.

Mud is rated PG-13 for some violence, sexual references, language, thematic elements and smoking.

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Summary Two teenage boys encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the bounty hunters on his trail and to reunite him with his true love.

Directed By : Jeff Nichols

Written By : Jeff Nichols

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Matthew McConaughey

Tye Sheridan

Jacob Lofland

Sam Shepard

Reese Witherspoon

Ray McKinnon

Sarah Paulson

Michael Shannon

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Poignant coming-of-age tale has some edgy content.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

This is a story about redemption and love and the

Not a ton of clear role models -- the boys make qu

Several fist fights, two between teenage boys and

A 14-year-old boy flirts with an older girl and go

The word "s--t" is used in nearly every

Cans of Beanie Weenie are shown a couple of times.

A few adult characters drink quite a bit -- Ellis&

Parents need to know that Mud is a nuanced coming-of-age drama about two 14-year-old boys who befriend a mysterious man (Matthew McConaughey) with a dangerous past. Expect plenty of tense sequences, fist-fighting violence, one big shoot-out that leaves several men dead, and a fair bit of strong language (the…

Positive Messages

This is a story about redemption and love and the universal heartache that comes with growing up and being rejected and not knowing what's right and what's wrong. Ellis and Neckbone are constantly given advice about what it means to be a man, to love a woman, and to protect those you love, but they have to discover what's true for themselves.

Positive Role Models

Not a ton of clear role models -- the boys make questionable decisions, Mud admits he killed a man, Juniper doesn't keep her promise, and Galen is an admitted womanizer. But when it comes down to it, Mud is willing to put himself at risk for the boys, and vice versa. The characters' friendships are unconditional, as is Ellis' parents love for him.

Violence & Scariness

Several fist fights, two between teenage boys and one in which an adult pops a teen boy in the eye. A man nearly chokes a woman and cuts her with a knife. A boy is bitten by a snake; his leg swells horribly, and he slips into unconsciousness before being taken to the hospital. A big gun fight toward the end of the movie leaves several people dead or injured.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A 14-year-old boy flirts with an older girl and goes on one date with her. They kiss twice. Neckbone asks Ellis whether he touched a girl's "t-tties" and excitedly flips through a stack of Penthouse magazines (no graphic images shown) saying innuendo-filled exclamations like "You've got to see these." Neckbone tells Ellis that "Help Me, Rhonda" is his uncle's "'doing it' song," and then a woman in a cleavage-baring tank top runs out and tells Neckbone that he should treat a girl like a princess, not like his no-good uncle. A woman flirts with and embraces a man who nuzzles on her neck. The uncle tells the boys that when a woman breaks your heart, you have to go find another and "get your tip wet again." A 17-year-old girl is shown laughing and flirting with a boy in his car.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

The word "s--t" is used in nearly every scene, especially by one of the boys. Other strong language includes "bitch," "bulls--t," "t-tties," "ass," "hard on," and more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Cans of Beanie Weenie are shown a couple of times. Many Ford trucks. A Geo Metro and Pontiac Fiero are shown. Neckbone wears a Fugazi T-shirt. People shop at a Piggy Wiggly.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A few adult characters drink quite a bit -- Ellis' father, Mud, Juniper -- usually alone, but also at a bar. An adult smokes cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Mud is a nuanced coming-of-age drama about two 14-year-old boys who befriend a mysterious man ( Matthew McConaughey ) with a dangerous past. Expect plenty of tense sequences, fist-fighting violence, one big shoot-out that leaves several men dead, and a fair bit of strong language (the boys say "s--t" a lot, as well as the occasional "bitch," "ass," and more). As for sexuality, one of the boys is smitten with an older girl, and they share a couple of kisses; his friend asks about her "t-tties" and is excited to find a stash of old Penthouse magazines (no graphic images shown). An uncle is known for "doing it" to the song "Help Me, Rhonda" and gives the boys terrible advice. Despite the film's language and references to adolescent and adult sexuality, Mud is the kind of thought-provoking film that teens and parents could watch and discuss together. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 3 parent reviews

Gritty and heart-warming

Not for under 16, what's the story.

Fourteen-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and his best friend, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), have made an awesome discovery on a remote island off of the Arkansas Delta where they live: a beautiful boat nestled perfectly in a large tree. But when they climb the tree and scope out the boat, they discover that someone has already claimed it -- a mysterious unnamed man ( Matthew McConaughey ) who asks them to bring him food. At first they're hesitant, but Ellis convinces Neckbone that it's the right thing to do. During clandestine subsequent visits, the boys discover that the man's name is Mud and that he killed a man to save the love of his life, Juniper ( Reese Witherspoon ), whom he's expecting to join him so they can run off together on the trapped boat. Back at home, Ellis deals with a crush on a senior girl and parents on the brink of divorce, while Neckbone, an orphan, lives with a charming womanizer of an uncle ( Michael Shannon ). When bounty hunters and the family of Mud's victim descend on the town, the boys face the consequences of aiding an escaped murderer.

Is It Any Good?

MUD is the sort of movie that stays with you long after the credits roll. Writer-director Jeff Nichols -- himself an Arkansas native -- has established himself as an actor's director with this independent drama that's so impressive you'll find yourself quoting the best parts to other people. Clearly Nichols has a soft spot for his home state, because he depicts it -- the poverty, the Piggly Wiggly, the rough-knuckled residents -- with tender, loving care. Even the perilous snakes swimming in the river are given both a symbolic and literal importance in the story. And what a simultaneously unique and age-old story it is: boys learning about what it means to be a man from a man who's both wise and dangerous.

The joy of watching Mud is threefold: the lush cinematography, the fabulous script, and the poignant portrayals from not only McConaughey, who delivers a career-best performance, but also the boys and the supporting cast. Sheridan's Ellis, the heart of the story, is a true Romantic who falls under Mud's spell because he yearns to believe that men will do anything to protect their love -- unlike his father (Ray McKinnon), who has apparently "given up" on his mother ( Sarah Paulson ). Lofland's Neckbone, on the other hand, is the movie's comic relief and voice of reason. The always amazing Sam Shepard has a pivotal role as a retired Marine sharpshooter who knew Mud as a boy, and Witherspoon pulls off a much tougher, sadder character than she usually plays. A touching story with terrific acting, Mud is everything that's good about independent films.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the similarities between Mud and other stories about kids who befriend enigmatic older characters, like Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird . How does the movie contain elements of both a Southern Gothic and a coming-of-age story?

In what ways does Mud 's setting influence the boys' personalities? How are they different than the people they consider "townies"? What does Ellis' father mean about enjoying the river while he can?

There's a lot of talk about love and relationships. What relationship models do Ellis and Neckbone have in their lives? Are any of them positive? Why is Ellis so heartbroken about Juniper and Mud's relationship? What are his views on love?

Do you think Mud is a man worth helping, or not? On the one hand, he's a criminal and a known liar, but on the other, his actions seemed justifiable by his love. The filmmaker, like the boys, doesn't judge Mud too harshly -- but what about you?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 26, 2013
• On DVD or streaming : August 6, 2013
• Cast : Matthew McConaughey , Reese Witherspoon , Sam Shepard , Tye Sheridan
• Director : Jeff Nichols
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Friendship
• Run time : 130 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some violence, sexual references, language, thematic elements and smoking
• Last updated : March 28, 2023

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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Mud: movie review.

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Movie review: Mud

Francesca Rudkin

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Jacob Lofland (left), Matthew McConaughey and Tye Sheridan work together to escape bountyhunters in Mud.

There are few genres Matthew McConaughey hasn't tried. He's covered historical drama ( Amistad ), sci-fi ( Contact ), slasher ( Texas Chainsaw Massacre ), war ( U-571 ), comedies ( EdTV ) and action ( Sahara ) - and of course he got stuck into rom-coms last decade. More recently, though, he's been taking on serious roles with his performance in Mud , a fine example of McConaughey graduating from film star to actor.

A character-driven coming-of-age story, Mud is a mix of fairy tale romanticism and gritty reality set in Mississippi. A little like Beasts of the Southern Wild , director Nichols conjures up a timeless Southern world resisting the encroachment of the real world, told through the eyes of 14-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan).

Everything is changing in Ellis' world: his parents' marriage is disintegrating, there's talk of moving out of their river house and into town, and his experience of first love isn't working out the way he'd hoped. Just as he's learning life and relationships can be complex and disappointing, Ellis meets Mud (McConaughey), a charismatic fugitive hiding on an island on the Mississippi River, who allows him to hang on to his sense of romanticism.

Mud convinces Ellis and his best friend, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), to help him rebuild a boat so when Juniper (Witherspoon), the love of Mud's life, turns up, they can escape together. The boys become Mud and Juniper's go-betweens, and when a group of bountyhunters arrive in town looking for Mud the boys are determined to see the lovers escape and live happily ever after.

Like Nichol's previous films, Take Shelter and Shotgun Stories , Mud is centred on men - young and old - struggling with life.

For the most part it's a sweeter and gentler film, although more sinister themes based on vengeance and violence emerge in the final act. It's a fraction long and Nichols gets a little distracted by peripheral storylines, but the performances are uniformly excellent.

Sheridan and Lofland are superb as Ellis and Neckbone, easily delivering the breadth of emotion required of their roles. Their adventure brings to mind Stand By Me with a touch of Mark Twain, and Nichols' lingering shots of the natural world are comparable with the work of film-maker Terrence Malick.

McConaughey, too, is captivating, full of easy charm, nervous energy and a Southern drawl that sounds divine.

Complemented by excellent supporting actors, including Ray McKinnon and Sarah Paulson as Ellis' parents, Mud has a stellar cast. Nichols knows they'll do the heavy lifting for him, and his nuanced direction and thoughtful visuals lets them do exactly that.

Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Reese Witherspoon

Jeff Nichols

Running time:

Fairy-tale romanticism and gritty reality make up this coming-of-age story

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Critic’s Pick

‘Civil War’ Review: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us. Again.

In Alex Garland’s tough new movie, a group of journalists led by Kirsten Dunst, as a photographer, travels a United States at war with itself.

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‘Civil War’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The writer and director alex garland narrates a sequence from his film..

“My name is Alex Garland and I’m the writer director of ‘Civil War’. So this particular clip is roughly around the halfway point of the movie and it’s these four journalists and they’re trying to get, in a very circuitous route, from New York to DC, and encountering various obstacles on the way. And this is one of those obstacles. What they find themselves stuck in is a battle between two snipers. And they are close to one of the snipers and the other sniper is somewhere unseen, but presumably in a large house that sits over a field and a hill. It’s a surrealist exchange and it’s surrounded by some very surrealist imagery, which is they’re, in broad daylight in broad sunshine, there’s no indication that we’re anywhere near winter in the filming. In fact, you can kind of tell it’s summer. But they’re surrounded by Christmas decorations. And in some ways, the Christmas decorations speak of a country, which is in disrepair, however silly it sounds. If you haven’t put away your Christmas decorations, clearly something isn’t going right.” “What’s going on?” “Someone in that house, they’re stuck. We’re stuck.” “And there’s a bit of imagery. It felt like it hit the right note. But the interesting thing about that imagery was that it was not production designed. We didn’t create it. We actually literally found it. We were driving along and we saw all of these Christmas decorations, basically exactly as they are in the film. They were about 100 yards away, just piled up by the side of the road. And it turned out, it was a guy who’d put on a winter wonderland festival. People had not dug his winter wonderland festival, and he’d gone bankrupt. And he had decided just to leave everything just strewn around on a farmer’s field, who was then absolutely furious. So in a way, there’s a loose parallel, which is the same implication that exists within the film exists within real life.” “You don’t understand a word I say. Yo. What’s over there in that house?” “Someone shooting.” “It’s to do with the fact that when things get extreme, the reasons why things got extreme no longer become relevant and the knife edge of the problem is all that really remains relevant. So it doesn’t actually matter, as it were, in this context, what side they’re fighting for or what the other person’s fighting for. It’s just reduced to a survival.”

By Manohla Dargis

A blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction, “Civil War” opens with the United States at war with itself — literally, not just rhetorically. In Washington, D.C., the president is holed up in the White House; in a spookily depopulated New York, desperate people wait for water rations. It’s the near-future, and rooftop snipers, suicide bombers and wild-eyed randos are in the fight while an opposition faction with a two-star flag called the Western Forces, comprising Texas and California — as I said, this is speculative fiction — is leading the charge against what remains of the federal government. If you’re feeling triggered, you aren’t alone.

It’s mourning again in America, and it’s mesmerizingly, horribly gripping. Filled with bullets, consuming fires and terrific actors like Kirsten Dunst running for cover, the movie is a what-if nightmare stoked by memories of Jan. 6. As in what if the visions of some rioters had been realized, what if the nation was again broken by Civil War, what if the democratic experiment called America had come undone? If that sounds harrowing, you’re right. It’s one thing when a movie taps into childish fears with monsters under the bed; you’re eager to see what happens because you know how it will end (until the sequel). Adult fears are another matter.

In “Civil War,” the British filmmaker Alex Garland explores the unbearable if not the unthinkable, something he likes to do. A pop cultural savant, he made a splashy zeitgeist-ready debut with his 1996 best seller “The Beach,” a novel about a paradise that proves deadly, an evergreen metaphor for life and the basis for a silly film . That things in the world are not what they seem, and are often far worse, is a theme that Garland has continued pursuing in other dark fantasies, first as a screenwriter (“ 28 Days Later ”), and then as a writer-director (“ Ex Machina ”). His résumé is populated with zombies, clones and aliens, though reliably it is his outwardly ordinary characters you need to keep a closer watch on.

By the time “Civil War” opens, the fight has been raging for an undisclosed period yet long enough to have hollowed out cities and people’s faces alike. It’s unclear as to why the war started or who fired the first shot. Garland does scatter some hints; in one ugly scene, a militia type played by a jolting, scarily effective Jesse Plemons asks captives “what kind of American” they are. Yet whatever divisions preceded the conflict are left to your imagination, at least partly because Garland assumes you’ve been paying attention to recent events. Instead, he presents an outwardly and largely post-ideological landscape in which debates over policies, politics and American exceptionalism have been rendered moot by war.

‘Civil War’ Is Designed to Disturb You

One thing that remains familiar amid these ruins is the movie’s old-fashioned faith in journalism. Dunst, who’s sensational, plays Lee, a war photographer who works for Reuters alongside her friend, a reporter, Joel (the charismatic Wagner Moura). They’re in New York when you meet them, milling through a crowd anxiously waiting for water rations next to a protected tanker. It’s a fraught scene; the restless crowd is edging into mob panic, and Lee, camera in hand, is on high alert. As Garland’s own camera and Joel skitter about, Lee carves a path through the chaos, as if she knows exactly where she needs to be — and then a bomb goes off. By the time it does, an aspiring photojournalist, Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), is also in the mix.

The streamlined, insistently intimate story takes shape once Lee, Joel, Jessie and a veteran reporter, Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), pile into a van and head to Washington. Joel and Lee are hoping to interview the president (Nick Offerman), and Sammy and Jessie are riding along largely so that Garland can make the trip more interesting. Sammy serves as a stabilizing force (Henderson fills the van with humanizing warmth), while Jessie plays the eager upstart Lee takes under her resentful wing. It’s a tidily balanced sampling that the actors, with Garland’s banter and via some cozy downtime, turn into flesh-and-blood personalities, people whose vulnerability feeds the escalating tension with each mile.

As the miles and hours pass, Garland adds diversions and hurdles, including a pair of playful colleagues, Tony and Bohai (Nelson Lee and Evan Lai), and some spooky dudes guarding a gas station. Garland shrewdly exploits the tense emptiness of the land, turning strangers into potential threats and pretty country roads into ominously ambiguous byways. Smartly, he also recurrently focuses on Lee’s face, a heartbreakingly hard mask that Dunst lets slip brilliantly. As the journey continues, Garland further sketches in the bigger picture — the dollar is near-worthless, the F.B.I. is gone — but for the most part, he focuses on his travelers and the engulfing violence, the smoke and the tracer fire that they often don’t notice until they do.

Despite some much-needed lulls (for you, for the narrative rhythm), “Civil War” is unremittingly brutal or at least it feels that way. Many contemporary thrillers are far more overtly gruesome than this one, partly because violence is one way unimaginative directors can put a distinctive spin on otherwise interchangeable material: Cue the artful fountains of arterial spray. Part of what makes the carnage here feel incessant and palpably realistic is that Garland, whose visual approach is generally unfussy, doesn’t embellish the violence, turning it into an ornament of his virtuosity. Instead, the violence is direct, at times shockingly casual and unsettling, so much so that its unpleasantness almost comes as a surprise.

If the violence feels more intense than in a typical genre shoot ’em up, it’s also because, I think, with “Civil War,” Garland has made the movie that’s long been workshopped in American political discourse and in mass culture, and which entered wider circulation on Jan. 6. The raw power of Garland’s vision unquestionably owes much to the vivid scenes that beamed across the world that day when rioters, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “ MAGA civil war ,” swarmed the Capitol. Even so, watching this movie, I also flashed on other times in which Americans have relitigated the Civil War directly and not, on the screen and in the streets.

Movies have played a role in that relitigation for more than a century, at times grotesquely. Two of the most famous films in history — D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist epic “The Birth of a Nation” (which became a Ku Klux Klan recruitment tool) and the romantic 1939 melodrama “Gone With the Wind” — are monuments to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause. Both were critical and popular hits. In the decades since, filmmakers have returned to the Civil War era to tell other stories in films like “Glory,” “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained” that in addressing the American past inevitably engage with its present.

There are no lofty or reassuring speeches in “Civil War,” and the movie doesn’t speak to the better angels of our nature the way so many films try to. Hollywood’s longstanding, deeply American imperative for happy endings maintains an iron grip on movies, even in ostensibly independent productions. There’s no such possibility for that in “Civil War.” The very premise of Garland’s movie means that — no matter what happens when or if Lee and the rest reach Washington — a happy ending is impossible, which makes this very tough going. Rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor’s face that, like Dunst’s, expressed a nation’s soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray.

Civil War Rated R for war violence and mass death. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this review misidentified an organization in the Civil War in the movie. It is the Western Forces, not the Western Front.

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Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times. More about Manohla Dargis

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Spy x Family Code: White review – ingenious espionage antics with special-power family

Popular manga characters receive their first film adaptation as they seek out a villainous colonel and an elusive dessert, brought off with great style by director Takashi Katagiri

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After a successful TV adaptation, the popular characters of the bestselling manga Spy x Family are ready for their big screen closeups. Directed by Takashi Katagiri from an original story, this highly entertaining film maintains the ingenious blend of espionage escapades and slice-of-life shenanigans that has made the series a smash hit, all while expanding its set pieces to a more spectacular scale. To achieve this delicate balance between comedy, suspense and action thrills is no easy feat and for the most part, the film accomplishes this mission well.

The lovable Forger trio of spy papa Loid, assassin mama Yor, and telepathic daughter Anya, are swiftly reintroduced; this fake family embarks on a hilarious adventure involving an elusive dessert, stolen negatives and a villainous colonel. Brought together by a top-secret assignment, the Forgers must hide their special powers from one another, a conundrum made even more comical by the inclusion of their fluffy pet Bond, a lab dog that has the ability to see the future.

Although modelled after cold war conflicts, any hint of politics is a mere MacGuffin, adding a touch of the pastiche to the film’s universe. From the jazzy score to chic gadgets and disguises, the tactile details are a welcome change from other movies that prioritise action over elegance. Spy × Family Code: White doesn’t always get the balance right; compared with the first half which, like the TV series, sees child-rearing as its own kind of mission impossible, some of the later scenes are bogged down by lengthy showdowns between the Forgers and their foes. The wacky humour, however, re-emerges in a surreal, gorgeously animated daydream dedicated to the god of poop. It is this full-throated commitment to silliness that makes this film, and Spy x Family as a whole, a singularly delightful experience.

• Spy x Family Code: White is in UK cinemas from 26 April, and in Australian cinemas now

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Under the Bridge review – Lily Gladstone leads respectful yet bland true crime drama

The recent Oscar nominee plays a cop investigating the brutal death of a teen in this noble but clunky retelling of a horrifying crime on Hulu

A s a true crime drama in the year 2024, Hulu’s Under the Bridge at least knows the giant potholes of the genre to avoid. The eight-episode limited series starring Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough , an adaptation of Rebecca Godfrey’s 2005 book on a sensational murder in Canada, knows not to glorify law enforcement as hyper-competent, or to privilege perpetrators’ emotional lives over a faceless victim’s, or to depict gratuitous violence. “I think people should be remembered for who they were, not what happened to them,” Keough, as Godfrey, tells the parents of Reena Virk, a 14-year-old girl horrifically beaten to death and drowned by both strangers and her so-called friends. As an exercise in how to make entertainment out of a real crime with real perpetrators and victims – particularly Virk, ably embodied by Vritika Gupta – Under the Bridge is self-aware and empathetic, clearly thinking through implications, its heart in the right place.

Unfortunately, as a television show, it often has the feeling of flat cola – tepid, stale and reminiscent of something buzzier and brighter. Though it assiduously dodges some of the worst of the so-called “dead girl” tropes, it falls prey to the most irksome ones of prestige streaming TV: bloated episode counts, multiple timelines, blurry formal shifts, portentous voiceovers, mistaking correct politics (on racism, incompetent law enforcement, trauma and more) for nuanced, compelling craft.

Though the crime itself is almost too awful to believe, there’s little to distinguish Under the Bridge, developed by the late Godfrey and Quinn Shephard, from other recent, better true-crime dramas such as Under the Banner of Heaven , The Staircase , The Act or The Girl from Plainville , nor from shows unraveling stomach-churning dead-girl crimes such as True Detective or Mare of Easttown. The series most overtly recalls the superlative Sharp Objects, HBO’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel, in that it also revolves around an unscrupulous, capital-T Troubled journalist returning to investigate the shocking murder of a teenage girl in her small home town, after escaping the tragic death of a sibling. But whereas Amy Adams’ cliched-to-hell unethical journalist was at least compelling, and the late Jean-Marc Vallée’s vision of midwestern Gothic hypnotic, Under the Bridge runs cold, even as it tries to capture the inexplicably white-hot rage of teenage girls (and one ill-placed, murderously angry teenage boy, played by Euphoria’s Javon Walton) on Vancouver Island in British Columbia in 1997.

The leaders of those girls are indeed terrifying – Josephine Brooks (Chloe Guidry) the alpha dog prone to bite swift and hard, Kelly Ellard (Izzy G) the chilling, lethal beta predator. The girls were self-styled “gangstas” who idolized John Gotti and fetishized mob violence; they practiced their cruelty on Dusty (Aiyana Goodfellow), a Black fellow resident at Josephine’s group home, and particularly on Reena, a shy and yearning outcast desperate for friends, nursing a nascent obsession with the Notorious BIG. (The series gestures just enough at the late-90s moral panic over pop culture’s influence on teenagers.)

The first half of the series unspools both the “gang” allure to a young outcast like Reena and the months, days, hours and minutes before her death. Reena was isolated – the eldest daughter in a south Asian family, her mother Suman (Archie Panjabi) a devout Jehovah’s Witness, her father Manjit (Ezra Faroque Khan) a Sikh immigrant from India, she was a minority within a minority on a very white island. Even in death, her life was dismissed – as a non-priority and “bic girl runaway” by the Saanich police (the moniker was “because we’re disposable”, says Dusty, in one of many heavy-handed lines). Only Godfrey, home from New York to write a book on Victoria’s disaffected youth, and officer Cam Bentland (Gladstone), a fellow outsider as an Indigenous woman adopted by the police chief (Matt Craven), take Reena’s disappearance seriously.

Gladstone, though occasionally prone to overacting, has always imbued her characters with a deep well of dignity, and does so again despite working with little characterization beyond “lonely and sad” as a Native woman adopted into a casually racist white family – a trait that highlights shameful Canadian national crimes, though is not enough for a whole person. Still, Gladstone is a reassuring on-screen presence, even if she’s forced to visibly wince at every mention of the word “race” or her boss/dad’s invocation of “sweetheart”. Keough, who rose above the middling Daisy Jones and the Six, is likewise underserved by the material; her portrayal of Rebecca as a hall-of-fame boundary-less, self-absorbed journalist – one who sleeps with a law enforcement source and does drugs with a teenage one – is at least watchable, if hardly palatable.

The thread of her “investigation”, if one could call it that, is hard to take, but at least there are others – most interestingly, if not smoothly, Reena’s dramatic rebellion against her parents in the months before her death. The fourth episode, written by Stuti Malhotra and directed by Nimisha Mukerji, epitomizes the promise and pitfalls of this sprawl, juxtaposing the Virks’ family history as immigrants in British Columbia with a humiliating, hard-to-watch dinner they host for Reena’s soon-to-be attackers. The lines are on-the-nose and clunky, the episode too long, but the point stands: there was more to this story then, a different, better way to tell it now. If only its practice kept up with its principles.

Under the Bridge is available on Hulu in the US with a UK date to be announced

• Riley Keough
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