Another “my guy” director on my list. Andrew Patterson burst onto the scene with The Vast of Night, one of the more interesting sci-fi movies of the last 10 years. I was wondering if someone was gonna give him more money to make a bigger sci-fi movie with special effects and CGI. Instead, Patterson goes for…bees? And bluegrass music? The Rivals of Amziah King is a hard sophomore pivot for the director, but one that suggests an even brighter future ahead from an already sterling beginning to his career! Alright, alright, alright Andy P!
Amziah King (Matthew McConaughey) doesn’t need a lot in life to be happy. He runs a small honey operation in Oklahoma, employing his friends and playing bluegrass music at the local potlucks. He also used to foster kids when he was younger, and happily recognizes former pseudo daughter Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass) out running errands. Overjoyed, he offers Kateri essentially an assistant manager job, teaching her the joys of beekeeping and being a part of a bluegrass group. And obviously learning truths and lies of potluck dining.
What Patterson pulls off here reminds me of The Peanut Butter Falcon a few years ago. Rarely does a movie stop feeling like a movie, but instead transforms into something else. The Rivals of Amziah King is so immersed in its setting and its people that the story ends up feeling like local legend, or fable. Amziah (thanks to a very Matthew McConaughey performance) transcends his simple existence because he cares, and judging by the looks of Kateri and the others around him, that care is the real substance of Patterson’s tale. That’s how you build a community. That, and an incredible soundtrack of bluegrass music, which I’ve enjoyed, but in this movie will hit that special part of your soul that only the purest things can penetrate. Amziah King builds to a high right at the midpoint, ephemeral but beautiful, like waking up from a deep pleasant night’s sleep.
What happens next is where Patterson takes his career into the stratosphere. It’s not called Amziah King remember: it’s called The Rivals of…. Tonally, Patterson boldly pushes us into the next section of the movie, transforming it into another chapter of the fable altogether. That foundation is necessary to understand what happens as the story develops for all the main characters. Side characters start revealing hidden depths no one sees at the outset, new people operating in the shadows start coming to light, and Kateri becomes something else altogether. The chill beginning gives way to this very tense exciting, and ingeniously plotted denouement. That bold of a story and tonal shift only works if you’re in assured hands, and Andrew Patterson handles that transition as elegantly as one of his delightful healing bluegrass anthems.
From here, sky’s the limit for Mr. Patterson. I’d like you to maybe not take as much time between films please. But if this is what you need to bring great stories like The Vast of Night and The Rivals of Amziah king? Then I take back what I said. You do you, and make my movie heart feel full again.