'The Rivals of Amziah King' (2026): Bluegrass, Bees, and a Breakout Star in the Year's Most Unruly Neo-Western
Andrew Patterson's genre-blending follow-up won't stay in its lane, but Matthew McConaughey and newcomer Angelina LookingGlass make the ride worth taking, even when the second half loses some of its warmth.
It took The Rivals of Amziah King to make me realize how many years have slipped by without Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar) leading a movie, and damn, does it feel good to have him back: the charm, the magnetism, the sun-baked drawl – none of it has faded. I'm also an easy mark for any neo-Western atmosphere, so I arrived predisposed to like this one, and I did. It's a pretty good film, wildly alive and impossible to mistake for anything else, kept just shy of great by a second half that made me second-guess where it was taking its people.
Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night) strikes a tonal balance I admired constantly: funny and dark in the same breath, a beekeeper-and-bluegrass-band story that treats an entire Oklahoma neighborhood as its main character. The community themes are developed beautifully, and The Rivals of Amziah King is unformulaic enough that halfway through I couldn't have told you where we were headed, a rare pleasure in a genre with such well-worn grooves. Here's where I lost my footing, though: as the warm, friendly rhythm of the first half gives way to a mystery-and-heist machinery with far grimmer intentions, my connection to these characters thinned out, and the movie began to feel like two stories stitched together. Ambitious genre-mixing rarely lands every note, and this doesn't either.
McConaughey is, expectedly, great, and it means something extra to watch him play a man so beloved by the community around him; you believe every hand he shakes. But the discovery here is Angelina LookingGlass, whose first screen role is a breakthrough performance of real gravity and restraint. That's exactly why the choices her character makes later bothered me. She nails every beat asked of her, yet the turn felt, to my reading of Kateri until then, almost opposed to everything she and Amziah stood for. The Rivals of Amziah King also often plays its darkest moments with an entertaining wink when they're genuinely serious, pulling a warm heart into very dark territory without fully reckoning with the cost. The supporting players are all excellent, from Kurt Russell (The Hateful Eight) and Cole Sprouse (Five Feet Apart) to Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel) and Rob Morgan (Just Mercy), each carving out a colorful presence without tipping into caricature.
Technically, the soundtrack (Erick Alexander, Jared Bulmer, Ben Hardesty) and the editing (Patrick J. Smith) are the standouts, and they're equals: both are so distinctive that they make this feel like nothing else in its genre. The bluegrass-rooted music is deeply involving, the kind that puts a smile on any viewer's face, while the editing packs an astonishing amount into tiny windows of time without ever turning abrupt, choppy, or chaotic. Add proper wide shots and sweet, golden sunlight, and it's a gorgeous movie to sit inside. Then there's the beekeeping, treated with such loving detail that a couple of shots – hundreds of bees crawling over the actors' bodies – are both insanely brave and scary, and the closing shot is an absolute beauty.
I left mixed on the darker turns of the second half but grateful for nearly everything around them. The Rivals of Amziah King trusts you to follow it somewhere unexpected and mostly rewards you for doing so.
Rating: B+
