Mud
Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.
What critics thought
Jeff Nichols' coming-of-age Southern drama drew nearly unanimous praise from critics, who singled out Matthew McConaughey's performance as a career-redefining turn and Nichols himself as a filmmaker of rare, quietly powerful storytelling gifts. The film works on multiple levels — as a boys' adventure, a love story, and a mood piece rooted deeply in its Mississippi River setting — and critics found it largely free of the sentimentality that traps lesser films in the same territory.
“Nichols has developed a talent for intimacy and for continuous tension—he could be developing into one of the great movie storytellers...[the film, as a whole] plays with a depth and psychological acuteness almost never found in our movies anymore.”
David Denby·The New Yorker
“Mud is the best Southern film I've seen in ages.”
Godfrey Cheshire·Indiewire
“Mud never comes unmoored from reality or drifts off into lazy abstraction and cliché. Nichols' eye for particulars, his feel for the characters and landscapes (and waterscapes), is so vivid you feel you could get bit by a mosquito or a water moccasin if you're not careful.”
Roger Ebert·RogerEbert.com
Genres
Drama
Cast & Crew
Mud
Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.
What critics thought
Jeff Nichols' coming-of-age Southern drama drew nearly unanimous praise from critics, who singled out Matthew McConaughey's performance as a career-redefining turn and Nichols himself as a filmmaker of rare, quietly powerful storytelling gifts. The film works on multiple levels — as a boys' adventure, a love story, and a mood piece rooted deeply in its Mississippi River setting — and critics found it largely free of the sentimentality that traps lesser films in the same territory.
“Nichols has developed a talent for intimacy and for continuous tension—he could be developing into one of the great movie storytellers...[the film, as a whole] plays with a depth and psychological acuteness almost never found in our movies anymore.”
David Denby·The New Yorker
“Mud is the best Southern film I've seen in ages.”
Godfrey Cheshire·Indiewire
“Mud never comes unmoored from reality or drifts off into lazy abstraction and cliché. Nichols' eye for particulars, his feel for the characters and landscapes (and waterscapes), is so vivid you feel you could get bit by a mosquito or a water moccasin if you're not careful.”
Roger Ebert·RogerEbert.com
Genres
Drama