Gold

The world in the near future is in trouble. A man (Zac Efron) rides the rails like a hobo. He gets driven to a job at the gold dig site. Along the way, they stumble upon a giant gold rock, but they are unable to dig it out with their limited tools. The man is left guarding the rock as the driver heads off for some heavy equipment.

Zac is going solo for long segments of this movie. In a way, it's his Cast Away. He does a fine job as his character deteriorates. A few plot points do bug me. When he is left alone initially, I felt something is off with the plan. The Stranger felt too aggressive. I almost assumed that she's a hallucination. I don't know why he's so protective of her body. Let the dogs have it. Finally, there is the arrow. I would rather not have the arrow. It's more sweetly dark to let the man have his reward. All in all, this is a fine effort from Zac and it's an interesting little indie.

"Gold" is a movie about two drifters who are travelling through the South Australian desert and they stumble across the biggest gold nugget ever found. They hatch a plan to protect and excavate their bounty with one man leaving (Man #2/Keith, played by Anthony Hayes) to secure the necessary equipment to pull it out of the earth. The other man (Man #1/ Virgil played by Zac Efron), remains on the spot to secure the loot. I cannot even imagine what Virgil (Zac) went through to persevere extreme heat conditions just to hold onto what he thinks he needs. I liked the plot as you can give your own interpretation to the facts of this movie. What is the value of the biggest chunk of gold in the world if you are in the middle of the desert, dehydrated, sunburnt and you kind of know you will not survive? What would you do? This movie clearly shows the everlasting greed and the lengths people will go to secure themselves a fortune. And I loved the cinematography, digitally enhanced or not. Was just awesome. And here we also see a different Zac in a character that he never played. And he succeeded as he put down an awesome acting performance. The story is concise and you kind of know what the other guy his plan will be. But never mind, this is a very good movie and deserves to be watched.

Watching over a chunky mountain of gold in the australian desert outback country. A twisted story about greed and gloathing gold like king midas of the past.

Hot sun and delirious minds, its litterary gold fever. A small cast survival thriller, a story that desmond bagley wouldve chuckled over and wilbur smith would nod about. The production shows the harsh dried out hell of australian desertlife, where the flies are kings and the snake and scorpions are the warriors. Neatly filmed and acted, the makeup squad gone bananas, and most stuff stashed like a good ol' madmax stage.

If youre able to sit and wait for things to happen, youll be rewarded, i did. A small recommend from the grumpy old man.

Starts off well and ends disappointedly.

Zac is very good throughout the movie, it has a similar feel to Tom Hanks in Castaway.

Sadly there's no Wilson to keep Zan company.

The last 30 mins is a terribly slow burn.

However, despite the excellent effort and story ,it, in my mind was unsatisfying.

The bleak decolourised washed out look is a bit of a cliche these days and made it visually bland, especially in the kind of landscapes it was filmed in. That was the intention I suppose, but The Good , the Bad and the Ugly desert scenes ( in colour) were far more effective in conveying mood and intensity.

Not a commercial movie and might only appeal to males, solitary, alienated desert freaks.

Just an opinion.