After a good man has everything taken from him, a young woman seeks revenge. Characters mention God’s transforming grace, and we meet people who care for and protect their community. But there’s murder in the mix (with no comeuppance), some bloody moments and quite a bit of foul language to contend with.
Amziah King is a good man.
Don’t get me wrong: You can easily see that Amziah has witnessed his share of hard, heavy times in life. He’ll readily admit that he’s no saint. But he’ll also say that he’s been saved by God’s grace. And he tries to share that grace with others around him.
In fact, it’s Amziah’s ready willingness to help nearly anyone and give the clothes off his own back that makes him one of the most beloved and respected figures in his community. Whether he’s singing bluegrass tunes with talented friends at a church potluck or just gathering neighbors for a meal and a song in his kitchen, you’ll see men and women openly and warmly smiling in his direction.
So when Amziah accidentally stumbles upon a young woman named Kateri, that familiar warm smile comes to her face as well. Years ago, she and her brother were foster kids who spent two loving years with Amziah and his wife, Glenda. But then Glenda grew ill and passed, and so the kids were taken away.
Of course, when Amziah comes upon Kateri, he welcomes her back to town and invites her to take a job on his honey farm. She readily agrees.
Over the next months, Amziah takes Kateri under his wing and teaches her the bee business. She’s afraid that she won’t be able to learn all she needs to know, but Amziah makes it clear that with bees, “patience is far better than being smart.” You need to let the community of bees grow at their own pace, understanding them and caring for their needs.
And as Amziah welcomes Kateri into his life—introducing her to the people he loves and respects, coaxing her to sing when she fears she has no voice, throwing wide the warm, sweet embrace of his community—Kateri begins to understand that Amziah’s world is very much like the hives of bees he so loves.
Azmiah’s world, like his hives, are filled with drones, cleaners, guards, foragers—each with their own happy role. And, of course, there’s Amziah, who in a sense, is the queen bee they all swarm to and love. And Kateri is more than delighted to take her place in that hive with mandolin notes and bluegrass chords swirling around them all.
But then something foul slithers in.
This nastiness steals away with Amziah’s bee hives. It threatens every good thing that has been built. And it quite literally extinguishes the very life of the hive that Kateri has come to love.
Kateri won’t—can’t—let that stand. She will find a way to reclaim what was stolen away. Kateri has nothing but what Amziah has given her. And though that honey-loving good man might not readily agree with the vengeance Kateri is planning, she will have it. For that is Kateri’s role in this hive.
As you might have already gathered, there is a warmth and openness about the community that Amziah welcomes Kateri into. The folks in that community are not perfect people. In fact, many are fallen individuals who’ve benefited from Amziah’s helping hand. But they care for and protect one another. And several are ready to help Kateri in her quest, despite the danger. (That vengeful quest comes with some negatives, obviously, but the bonds that Kateri shares with her friends are worth applauding.)
While welcoming Kateri into his group and trying to coax her to sing with joy, Amziah tells her, “You just gotta drop some of that armor you’ve got on ya. This is a safe place. I promise you.” Kateri eventually joins in the group’s joyous and exuberant music.
Amziah professes to be “saved by God.” And when an extreme situation causes him to swear he laments, “You made me cuss. Born-again Christian and I haven’t done that in two years!”
However, even though Amziah’s language sometimes turns foul, you can see his faith and good heart evidenced in his actions. We meet several people who state that Amziah gave them a place to stay and a job when no one else would. Amziah’s lawyer and friend attests to the fact that he had “nothing but debt” because he quietly gave so much of his business earnings away to those in need.
Someone notes that they’re “just casting out the demons on the entrances and the exits.” Amziah proclaims that a particular brand of banjo is a “Religiously iconic instrument.” Church members sing “It is Well With My Soul” at a beloved member’s funeral. We see several scenes of people singing hymns during church services. A husband tells a woman in church that his sick wife appreciates the congregation’s prayers and cards.
Amziah tells Kateri a story about a church pastor who was up to some suspicious sexual activities involving various young female members. A guy helping Kateri goes shirtless as he swims in a lake.
A man’s ponytail gets caught in a whirling honey extractor, and the top of his scalp gets ripped off and pulled into the machine. He falls back and reaches up to feel his bloody, exposed skull. Blood spatters the victim’s and another man’s clothes. Amziah retrieves the man’s bloody scalp and stuffs it into a honey bottle.
A man is locked in a honey heat room and expires from the extreme heat. An elderly woman is poisoned and dies. A man flees from police in his truck, which is hit by a speeding train. He exits that smashed vehicle and steals another man’s truck. He’s then chased down and killed with a shotgun blast.
It’s revealed that an individual has had heart problems in recent years. And he grabs his chest while having a painful attack. Later, the man is faced with a huge shock and slumps over with another attack that kills him. Someone talks about her mother committing suicide.
Amziah demonstrates a queen bee’s place in the hive by holding one in his fingers as bees swarm in and cover his arm. Kateri stands amidst a swirling cloud of bees and proclaims that none of them sting her.
Amziah is called in to handle a bee swarm at a local school and cuts a huge bee colony out of a wall. A teacher points to a group of kids who were all stung. A bus driver gets stung in the throat and has to be helicoptered out to a hospital because of an incapacitating allergic reaction. Someone steps in to drive a bus full of kids out of the area, but when the driver hits a large pothole at speed, kids bounce up out of their seats, hitting the roof and falling to the floor.
We see quick bloody shots of a cow’s birthing process going terribly wrong.
There are 10 f-words and more than 20 s-words in the dialogue along with multiple uses of the words “h—,” “d–n” and “b–ch.” There are also a total of four misuses of God’s name (three of which blend God with “d–n”). And someone cries out “Dear Jesus!” and “Sweet Jesus!” once apiece.
While in a hospital bed, an injured man states, “I’m on some good ‘s—‘ now.” We hear about someone getting drunk after bad news and being arrested. A young man helping Kateri says that he was dishonorably discharged from the service for possession of illegal drugs. Someone lights up a cigarette and smokes it.
Kateri learns about a small group of people who steal peoples’ bees and then sell them to unsuspecting bee farmers. She tracks the thefts back to a wealthy businessman who has a history of cheating and stealing but who has effectively shielded himself from police and prosecution. Kateri also hires an individual who illegally acquires police information about guilty parties.
Kateri tells someone that bees don’t sting her. The other man then refers to her American Indian heritage, asking, “Is that, like, a Native thing?” A killer gets away with two different murders.
Matthew McConaughey brings an easy, eccentric grace to his role of the honey-loving Amziah King.
Amziah is a man of Appalachian contradictions: A born-again Christian who’s determined to show godly goodness, but who’s also ready to profanely burn your ears when he’s suitably irked. He’ll stare hard at injustice with iron in his eyes and then sing joyfully with a mandolin in his hands. He’s a church potluck dinner with a moonshine chaser.
That sense of smooth-flowing incongruity that McConaughey so effortlessly and buoyantly portrays is writ large all over this film. The Rivals of Amziah King is both a bluegrass-fueled, toe-tapping joy and a vengeful dramaturgy with dark and dirty corners.
Unfortunately, the film leaves us, for the most part, in those dark corners. Yes, our human nature tells us that an eye-for-an-eye resolution is just, but that flies in the face of the grace-filled godly side of things that we were given a glimpse of early on.
That cinematic outcome leaves us with an ear full of profanity, an eyeful of cruel murder and a less than honey-sweet taste in our mouths.
