The Rivals of Amziah King Is A Twisty Crime Thriller Unlike Any Movie You’ve Seen
It's a Western crime thriller... musical?
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.
The Rivals of Amziah King slowly unveils itself slowly over the course of several vignettes that, at first, seem unrelated. The film takes an almost slice-of-life approach to Amziah King’s life, starting with that first of many joyful jam sessions. Amziah King is pulled away from his performance by the police, who want his beekeeping expertise to help solve the mystery of a truck full of stolen honey. But that leads to a surprise trip to a hospital, and a stop at a far-away diner, which reunites him with a former foster daughter, Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass). From there, the film lazily sketches out the mundane joys of Amziah King’s life — church potlucks, spontaneous kitchen jam sessions, schoolyard beehive swarms, and lots and lots of honey. All of this we see through the point of view of Kateri, who is immediately enchanted by Amziah’s whole life, and the group of lovable misfits that he’s collected around him.
The cast and director of The Rivals of Amziah King at its SXSW premiere.
Patterson and cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz bathe the film in a warm, nostalgic glow, with every shot feeling permanently sun-dappled — and Amziah King is that sun. The affection, bordering on awe, that Kateri has for Amziah King seeps through every frame, and it’s doubled by Patterson’s clear reverence for McConaughey as a star. And McConaughey plays the part, all toothy grins and witty remarks while he welcomes Kateri into the fold. The film’s collection of colorful characters, including Rob Morgan’s level-headed lawyer, Scott Shepherd’s incomprehensible handyman, Owen Teague’s ex-con, and Cole Sprouse’s amateur sleuth (all of whom are part of Amziah’s bluegrass band in some way), also lend to the film’s misfit charm. But once the film pulls its second-act twist, it becomes clear that the film really belongs to Angelina LookingGlass.
LookingGlass is a revelation in The Rivals of Amziah King, giving a breakout performance as the unexpected lead of the film’s second, darker half. Her wide-eyed awe in the first half quickly turns to steely blankness as she embarks on a mission that brings her up against Amziah King’s ruthless rivals, including a wealthy tycoon played with slimy charm by Kurt Russell. And it’s through LookingGlass’ fearless performance that Rivals of Amziah King smoothly pulls off its whiplash-inducing tonal shift — trading its lighthearted folksy melodrama for a grim vigilante thriller.
But it’s a shift that Patterson has built into the fabric of the film. Patterson would frequently employ speed ramps and freeze frames to add a little drama to a mundane scene, like Amziah showing Kateri around a potluck. It’s this technique that pays off once the film takes a turn into crime thriller territory, especially once Kateri, with the help of Amziah’s gang of lovable cohorts, pulls off one of the movie’s more impressive heists.
The Rivals of Amziah King is a brilliant genre-bending epic that fuses the classic American Southern tall tale with a propulsive crime thriller. It’s both a sweetly mundane and bizarrely thrilling love letter to the American Southwest and all the strange stories you might find there.
