Gold is an objectively ugly element. It’s a dull, diarrhea-yellow, and it serves little practical purpose other than being a relatively clean conductor of electricity. And yet, simply because of its rarity, it’s become a coveted metal—even as displaying it in abundance reveals one’s lack of taste. For example, only a complete moron with no class whatsoever would decide to deck out, say, his entire Manhattan apartment in gold.
Now there’s a movie called Gold, and to its credit, it hardly ever puts the awful-looking metal onscreen. The film’s plot, however, is consumed by it. Matthew McConaughey plays a Nevada prospector in the ’80s who’s desperately looking for it; Édgar Ramírez plays a geologist who thinks he’s found quite a bit of it in Indonesia. Together they team up to build a gold mine, and, as they take on investors, a wild ride on the capitalism train ensues.
