Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) channels Twain in his newest film Mud, and what it lacks in thrills, twists or turns, the movie makes up for with something more appropriate for this kind of story: spirit.
Ellis (Tye Sheridan) is a country-bred teenage boy with a lot of time on his hands after he's finished helping his father with his small fishing business, operated on the river that is their backyard and their livelihood. He is a romantic in an unromantic world, going on adventures with his best pal, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), a crass, potty-mouthed but loyal friend. Ellis is a strong believer in love, sticking up for girls who accept the abuse of high school boys much older than him. He is searching for answers to two great mysteries in his life: the source of heartache in his parents' failing marriage, and the origins Mud (Matthew McConaughey), the mystical greaseball living on a nearby island in a motorboat stuck up in a tree.
Mud reveals little information to begin with, eking out small details here and there as he learns to trust Ellis and Neckbone. They exchange canned Beanie Weenies for secrets into his past, and we discover that he's something of a kindred spirit to Ellis. He's hiding from bounty hunters, having killed a man in Texas to protect the love of his life, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), who’s also the reason for his improbable marooning. He's waiting for Juniper, and he'll wait till the Rapture comes if need be. Mud’s quirks are done justice when given life by McConaughey 's vigorous performance that’s equal parts charm and oil slick. Ellis has much more sympathy to Mud's plight than Neckbone, willing to help someone as desperately in love as he wishes his mother and father still were.
The machinations of sneaking off food, tug-boating to the island at wee hours of the night to see Mud, and passing letters to the besieged Juniper at a motel right under the noses of bent-outta-shape bounty hunters can't possibly last, and it doesn't. Ellis is a boy in over his head, and Mud is a wanted murderer. The police are in on the search, too, though not as snarling or eager as the Texans. Nichols's skillful direction of weighty violence — that is, purposeful violence which contributes to the plot's construction — is on full display in the third act of the movie when the bounty hunters seem to have Mud under their bootheels.
Nichols's story has the off-kilter noir conceit of an Elmore Leonard novel, but it’s populated with charismatic misfits straight from Huck Finn. And thankfully, Sheridan is a skilled actor for his age, one who commits and convinces us that what he says, he feels. Ellis is a child character whose age does not stand as a barrier to connection with the audience. His is the kind of implacable charisma that, instead of standing apart from us, makes us feel more at one with him. With Mud, we are reeled in, left to flail about in panic and uncertainty before being placed gently back in the water, reassured and hopeful.
