Mud - another good Matthew McConaughey film

The second film I watched on my flight to Chicago last month is the last one I'm going to write about from that trip.  Matthew McConaughey is an actor about whom I knew very little until a few years ago.  I don't think I can remember seeing him in anything at all before I saw Killer Joe last year, and looking through his IMDB resume I think the only film of note on the list is Contact (maybe Tropic Thunder too).  So it's hardly a surprise that he never appeared much on my film radar.  Anyway, something has changed now and in the course of a couple of years he has suddenly become and actor who stars in very interesting films - films like Mud.

Here Matthew McConaughey plays the eponymous Mud - a mysterious loner who appears on a deserted island in the middle of a swamp in rural Arkansas.  Two local boys discover Mud hiding out in a grounded boat beached on the island when exploring the swamp in their normal way.  They recognise Mud as potentially dangerous, but at the same time mysterious and intriguing.  When Mud offers to trade them a gun for their help in fixing up the beached boat help they quickly agree.  When he tells them about his girlfriend Juniper in the town, and how he is unable to go and get in contact with her, they naively agree to pass on messages to help him out - dreams of young love drowning out any warning signs of what they might be about to get involved in.

Mud is a very good film that tells a story about family, loyalty and betrayal in which the naivities of youth are tested against the desperate realities of the real world.  When the main young lad Ellis looks at Mud and Juniper he sees only star-crossed lovers rather than two people locked in a painful and possibly abusive relationship.  When Ellis falls in love with an older local girl he immediately declares her his girlfriend - causing her amusement and his rejection.  The main question the film asks though is which will win out, Mud's cynicism or Ellis' idealism.  When 'something bad' happens to Ellis, what will Mud risk to save the lad?

The film might be a little cheesy in its depiction of Reese Witherspoon's Juniper as the classic damsel in distress, but its heart is in the right place as it shows two impressionable young lads trying to think the best of the adults around them and asking if those adults will respond in kind.  Plus there's Matthew McConaughey's acting, which is really good.  He may have come to it late in his career, but it seems like he is intent on becoming a serious actor.  Good for him, and good for us.