Film
Gold, the dramatic tale of Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey – Sing, Interstellar), a prospector seeking fortune, and hoping to find a big deposit of the precious metal. Wells teams up with Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramírez – The Girl On The Train, Joy), and together, the team head into the uncharted jungle of Indonesia.
Being a fourth generation prospector, Wells is driven. With the recent, and sudden death of his father, he now has something to prove, seeking posthumously for his fathers approval. The search for gold in Indonesia is beset with many pitfalls, and as he pushes himself more, running out of money, his relationship with girlfriend Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard – Jurassic World) are souring by the day.
With a decidedly straight forward plot, and a slow, yet steady pace to the story, Gold makes for interesting viewing, no thanks in much part to the stars, and likes of McConaughey’s acting talent. The story itself is likely not to have much rewatch value amongst viewers, but don’t pass up a least one viewing of this film.
There are the usual back-stabbing people, cut-throat business deals, and corrupt government officials. But the tenacity of Wells is evident throughout. He may not be the nicest guy around, as he gets wrapped up in his new found riches, but he is sure determined.
Gold, a dramatic tale of rags to riches, of never giving up, and the unethical persons one might encounter along the way. Some escape for lovers of drama, presented by some talented cast.
Disc
Overall, the disc is of a decent technical quality, with a good movie for the main feature. It is however devoid of any bonus features.
Gold is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video of the main feature is encoded at a high average bitrate, with no visible artefacts on-screen. Colour are vibrant, where appropriate. There is no visible colour bleed, and good detail is maintained in darker scenes.
Viewers with the necessary hardware or software could scale up to a larger, or higher resolution screen, should they wish.
Audio
Audio is encoded in a high average bitrate, and presented in a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, with a 2.0 downmix. The audio choices can only be accessed via the player controls, as there is no menu selection for them.
Dialogue is clear via the centre speaker, with the weight of the soundtrack carried on the front channels. There is infrequent use of the surround channels, which serve merely to widen the on-screen world, and help draw the viewer into the story with some environmental and ambient noise.
Navigation
Navigation is simple, and easy to follow, with a static main menu, and accompanying music. There are options to play the main features, or to access the scenes sub-menus.
The scenes sub-menus comprise of four small, colour, motion thumbnails each, for a total of twelve chapters. While the thumbnails are numbered, they are not labelled, and coupled with their smaller size, will mean there is a need for some guesswork when wanting to navigate to a specific part of the main feature.
Bonus Features
There are no bonus features on the disc, however there are trailers for Brimstone, The Circle, and The Promise.
These can be individually skipped, and fast-forwarded. They can not be accessed again via the disc menus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhYROWOayLw
