Mud

Mud (2013) is about two boys who find a fugitive on an island in Arkansas. Ellis and Neckbone live on the Mississippi. They go out to an island and find a boat stuck in a tree, left there by a flood. Someone is living in it. He introduces himself as Mud. He says he killed a man and that both the police and the dead man's family are after him. He is also waiting for a woman named Juniper and says he did all of it for her. The boys bring him food and help him repair the boat. The real subject is Ellis. His parents are separating and he will not accept it; he wants to believe love can save something, and Mud's story gives him that belief. The film slowly takes it apart. Jeff Nichols wrote and directed; he grew up by the river and the knowledge of the place comes from there. Matthew McConaughey stars. This falls in the years when he moved out of romantic comedy into serious work, and the film is regarded as central to that turn. Tye Sheridan plays Ellis in his first major role. Sam Shepard and Michael Shannon are in the cast. It was shot on the actual river and in real houseboats. The skeleton of the story is close to Mark Twain: a river, an island, a fugitive, two boys. The final section becomes a shootout and strikes some viewers as detached from the film's tone. It runs 130 minutes. Good for: rural American drama, coming of age, and character cinema. Less good for: the pace is slow and the ending changes genre.