Andrew Patterson’s genre-bending movie “The Rivals of Amziah King” plays at the M.V. Film Center starting Oct. 2, and is full of great music, humor, mystery, and adventure.. It can make you smile and, at times, keep you guessing about where the story will go next.
Veteran actor Matthew McConaughey stars as a backwoods philosopher, Amziah, and Angelina LookingGlass is Kateri, a young indigenous woman who was once his foster child.
Set in rural Oklahoma, the narrative opens with an intriguing hook. The loquacious, mandolin-playing Amziah and his musically gifted bluegrass band of misfits gather at a low-key drive-in to play their hearts out as waitresses serve drivers in hulking vehicles around them. The band members share an easy camaraderie as they serenade the diners and play up a foot-stomping storm. Suddenly, a detective shows up and asks Amziah, a professional beekeeper and honey producer, to help identify whom some huge, valuable barrels of stolen honey belonged to.
Happy to comply, Amziah must extract the honey and look for the owner’s markings inside the barrel. His friends join the complicated procedure, each doing his job like a worker bee. The scene takes a bizarre turn before jumping to the next few scenarios, which lead to his wandering into a diner. It turns out his waitress is Katari, whom Amziah hasn’t seen since she was 8. He takes her under his wing, folding Katari into his warm family of friends. Amziah also introduces her to the magical world of beekeeping and honey production, explaining that each hive is an interconnected community of three types of bees: drones, worker bees, and a queen.
With all its surprises, it would be a spoiler to give away too much more, except to say that when the unexpected happens, the film turns into an imaginative, fast-paced revenge drama, as Amziah’s rivals set themselves against him in the competitive underworld of beekeeping. This introduces a particularly fiendish character, Dob McCoy, played by Kurt Russell. Ultimately, “The Rivals of Amziah King” becomes a tale of a colony’s collapse and rebuilding of the hive.
The memorable, rousing soundtrack, which leaves you wanting to hear more, along with the ensemble cast, knits the film together, creating a boisterous, curious, enjoyable romp.
“The Rivals of Amziah King” opens at the M.V. Film Center on Oct. 2. For tickets and information, visit mvfilmsociety.com.
