With American independent film teeming with so many shaky-cam snarksters, what an electric riposte to the status quo is Nichols, whose films are classically constructed and deadly serious. In his short but potent career, he’s mastered a wide-vistaed eye for the epic and the elemental.
A coming-of-age story built around a mystery of, "Who the **** is this dirtbag?" The more we find out about McConaughey's Mud, the more the protagonist figures out about life; it's a plot that flows beautifully and the performances are stellar all around. If you can ignore McConaughey's fake chipped tooth* (I kept waiting for it to start whistling like Gob's in Arrested Development) this is a couple hours well worth your time.
*Apparently, McConaughey said he was willing to chip it for real, but the director opted for a prosthetic. He should've let Matt go for it.
Mud is by far one of the most original story I have ever seen. Matthew McConaughey was amazing in this film and Reese Witherspoon was brilliant. The two kids were also amazing and the movie just was pretty good. The movie does start to lose steam in the middle but catches up to the fun and hype at the very end. Overall, I am satisfied with this one and I think is one of the better movies I have seen this year.
There's something old-fashioned about Mud, but if you allow yourself to settle into its leisurely pace, it will reward you. If he were alive today, Mark Twain would approve.
It doesn’t trivialize Mud to label it Tennessee Williams lite — at least in its romantic notions. Nichols gets good performances out of one and all, but lets himself get so caught up in his sense of place that this potboiler hangs around more than a few minutes after that pot has come to a boil.
Stripped of his former pretty-boy image, the Texas-born actor is snarly and gnarled, and understands what Nichols is aiming for. That’s crucial, as Mud needs something to stick to.
Mud was my favorite movie last year. A lovely fable about the friendship between a drifter on the run from the police and two teenage boys, growing up in dysfunctional families, on the Arkansas River. It brought to mind Carson McCullers as much as Mark Twain. McConaughey as a man who had been a feral child and had never really become an adult, gave a beautifully modulated performance, making a touching portrait of a simple man easily the equal of his Oscar-winning work in Dallas Buyers Club. Jeff Nichols' film is even more emotionally involving than his stunning "Take Shelter", a lovely portrait of a simple society being torn apart by "progress". Superb work also by Tye Sheridan and Sam Shepard.
you gotta see this..
Mud
It scores highly and stands alone on its eerie perspective on conveying a tale to the viewers along with its all mixed up genre feature that hardly settles on an answer. Mud is profoundly written, explicitly executed and has some genuine dreadful characters that are given enough room to justify themselves on the plot offering enough range for the actors too to perform majestically. Jeff Nichols is brilliant in both of his job i.e. writing and directing and has an amazing cast star like Matthew McConaughey who is supported by brilliant kids and Michael Shannon and Sarah Paulson that helps him sail off this boat safe and easy to the shore. Mud; as said earlier, doesn't fit in a genre and hence helps the script to be unpredictable till the end leaving the audience mesmerized but has a bit of a trouble on its pace which is quite slow and it factors in a lot considering it is of more than 2 hours.
. Mud was boring , really boring and I felt it got no where throughout it , McConaughey is great as are the kid actors but it was just boring it got nowhere it was just like watching this hobos life. Defiantly overrated.