My wife and I watched this at home on DVD, a Redbox rental.
Although this story was strongly inspired by real events it is in fact fictional with fictional characters, sort of composites of several real characters. In the 1990s a small Canadian company really did get with a prospector to find GOLD in the wilds of Indonesia.
In this story Matthew McConaughey is Kenny Wells, more than a bit haphazard in his approach to life and to business. But he is enamoured with GOLD, as he says at one point the money didn't really matter to him, he wanted to mine GOLD, lots of it.
He looks up a prospector, Edgar Ramírez as Michael Acosta. Kenny is a persuasive salesman and with the help of his friends manages to raise several hundred thousand dollars. They start the prospecting, which involved taking a number of core samples in a region where GOLD is sometimes found by panning in the river.
I like McConaughey and he is great here as a man who sometimes made seemingly very irrational decisions. Like turning down a $300Million buy-out because his name would no longer be attached to the mining operation. Interesting movie, well worth a watch, and pretty Bryce Dallas Howard is good as Kay, Kenny's girlfriend and wife.
SPOILERS: The core of the story mirrors what happened in the real world. Assays of core samples continued to show small amounts of GOLD, but enough to estimate 10Million ounces of recoverable gold. That would be $Billions of GOLD. Problem was, Acosta was "seeding" the crushed core samples, using gold shavings from his ring, then some gold he bought from villagers. In fact there was no gold in the ground, it was all a scam. Found out, the Indonesian government had him taken up in a helicopter and dropped out at 1000 feet, his body later found partially eaten by wildlife. When Kenny looked up Kay again, she had some mail for him, one from Acosta included a check for $82Million, drawn on a foreign bank. He had sold much of his stock before the fraud was exposed and as a 50/50 partner sent Kenny his share. Did Kenny get the money? We will never know!
Although this story was strongly inspired by real events it is in fact fictional with fictional characters, sort of composites of several real characters. In the 1990s a small Canadian company really did get with a prospector to find GOLD in the wilds of Indonesia.
In this story Matthew McConaughey is Kenny Wells, more than a bit haphazard in his approach to life and to business. But he is enamoured with GOLD, as he says at one point the money didn't really matter to him, he wanted to mine GOLD, lots of it.
He looks up a prospector, Edgar Ramírez as Michael Acosta. Kenny is a persuasive salesman and with the help of his friends manages to raise several hundred thousand dollars. They start the prospecting, which involved taking a number of core samples in a region where GOLD is sometimes found by panning in the river.
I like McConaughey and he is great here as a man who sometimes made seemingly very irrational decisions. Like turning down a $300Million buy-out because his name would no longer be attached to the mining operation. Interesting movie, well worth a watch, and pretty Bryce Dallas Howard is good as Kay, Kenny's girlfriend and wife.
SPOILERS: The core of the story mirrors what happened in the real world. Assays of core samples continued to show small amounts of GOLD, but enough to estimate 10Million ounces of recoverable gold. That would be $Billions of GOLD. Problem was, Acosta was "seeding" the crushed core samples, using gold shavings from his ring, then some gold he bought from villagers. In fact there was no gold in the ground, it was all a scam. Found out, the Indonesian government had him taken up in a helicopter and dropped out at 1000 feet, his body later found partially eaten by wildlife. When Kenny looked up Kay again, she had some mail for him, one from Acosta included a check for $82Million, drawn on a foreign bank. He had sold much of his stock before the fraud was exposed and as a 50/50 partner sent Kenny his share. Did Kenny get the money? We will never know!