SXSW Review: ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ is a Magnetic Film with Deeply Memorable Performances

Some people move through life more freely than the rest of the world. They see obstacles and opt either to surmount or simply bypass them, and take each new development in life as something that’s just part of their journey. Such people can be fascinating and also infuriating, but in either case, they’re typically very much worth watching. The Rivals of Amziah King invents a protagonist who completely fits that bill, meeting every new challenge with ecstasy and charm, determined to see everything through as if it was the most – or least – important thing to him.

Amziah (Matthew McConaughey) arrives at a fast food restaurant to jam with his friends, and when the police show up looking for him, he’s all smiles. As a local maker of honey, he’s been asked to figure out if a few barrels that have been found belong to anyone in particular. While his initial assessment doesn’t yield productive results, it does preview trouble he’ll soon encounter when his rivals decide that he’s a fair target. He’s blissfully distracted by being reunited with Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass), who stayed with him as a foster child years earlier and expresses interest in joining his business and learning all about working with bees.

It’s truly impossible to summarize this film and what makes it so fantastic and unique. Like Amziah, it’s so many things at once. An early scene features a horrifying workplace injury that’s played exclusively for laughs, and Amziah’s response to the situation only makes it more hilarious. When he sees Kateri for the first time in years and introduces her to his musician neighbors, it’s like watching the proudest and most supportive father showing his daughter a glimpse of adulthood. And later in the film, the tone shifts again to a mystery-driven caper, with humor embedded in an altogether much more serious storyline with fatal implications.

McConaughey has been to SXSW before, most recently for Harmony Kormine’s The Beach Bum. While that role fit him like a glove, this one might be even more perfect. It’s sometimes hard to understand what he’s saying with his thick Oklahoma accent – though that doesn’t compare to his associated played superbly by Scott Shepherd, whose words are almost entirely indiscernible – but he says it all with such a joyous passion that it’s hard not to be entranced. He’s the guiding energy, alternately jovially conversational and in the zone of his music, for the first half of the film, inviting any viewer to be fully captivated.

McConaughey, great as he is, isn’t even the best reason to see this film. That would be his costar, LookingGlass, making her film debut with this astonishingly subtle turn. At first, she’s visibly happy to see Amziah on their chance encounter but still quite reserved, and when he compels her to sing during their dinnertime jam session, she’s incredibly embarrassed. But as the film progresses and she spends more time with Amziah as an adult, she comes out of her shell in a magnificent way, yielding a quiet power that others just can’t perceive. It’s an astounding debut, and this film should open plenty of doors for more phenomenal roles for this excellent breakout.

In his follow-up to The Vast of Night, director Andrew Patterson, in collaboration with co-screenwriter James Montague, delivers something that can’t be replicated, if only because it refuses to be any one thing. It’s a story that morphs into a new kind of film every time new plot elements are introduced, and it never gets old or tired, even if it’s starkly different in tone and substance from what audiences were watching only moments earlier. This is a hypnotic film that makes great use of its substantial 130-minute runtime and will leave audiences thinking about it long after the credits roll.

Movie Rating: 9/10