Matthew McConaughey plays one of those roles. Except that he gets to be lively.

He doesn’t seem to work that much these days. There are stories about him living his life in a trailer somewhere in Texas. I don’t know how true these are, but they do build a myth around him.

Amziah King is a honey… farmer? He collects the honey from the colonies he maintains, I guess would be the correct way to describe his job. While not doing that (since the bees are doing most of the work anyhow), he mingles with the locals, especially with the local musicians. Then he stumbles upon Kateri, a young woman who was once a foster child living with him, but had been taken away after Amziah’s wife died. Kateri comes to work for Amziah and is a natural at it. The two of them bond again with Kateri being comfortable enough push back on Amziah’s antics. Then things take a turn when Amziah’s colonies are stolen.

Structurally this is an unusual animal. About half the movie is just us following Amziah and then him and Kateri around. There’s Amziah showing his expertise of honey as part of a crime investigation that goes nowhere, there’s him explaining the foods in a potluck to Kateri through the people who brought them, and playing music. A lot. The actual story doesn’t start until after this (more on that later). If you think you would enjoy that, this is a movie for you. The purpose here is to get charmed by these two and they don’t take shortcuts.

And it is actually important. This movie is about the little guy being crushed by the elite. The little guy can get by with the help of their community and the community is behind them, because they participate. You could do this by shorthand, but that would be less fun.

The movie is weirdly timeless in the sense that things seem to be from different times. The movie itself is grainy, but since large parts of it has been shot with handheld cameras, it’s pretty obvious that this is a digital effect. Then there’s things like the phones: There are cellphones, but mostly they just use landlines.

I guess I should say a few words on Andrew Patterson, the director-writer-producer. He works independently. This is only his second feature, the first being the excellent Vast of Night. Vast of Night is also very similar movie. It uses a lot of time to set things up, to make sure that we understand the situation and the people we are following. Only then do we get to the thing. And yet, it works. Actually, I would argue that it works better than in this movie. Patterson makes commercials, but unlike many of the other directors who came from that world, he doesn’t rely on quick edits and rushing things forward. He takes his time.

I wonder how much of this movie is about his personal experiences in the film business? He financed his Vast of Night independently and had trouble finding ways to distribute it. If you don’t have those industry connections, all of this might easily feel like you are being crushed by the big boys, because of course they will protect themselves and their money. They are not going to risk their business in that way, which leaves these independent producers in a rough place, even if they are making a better product than their bigger competitors who can easily get shit into tens of thousands of theaters while these smaller actors are forced into streaming their movies cheaply.

Spoiler time! But you might still want to read this. There’s one major spoiler, but otherwise I think you’ll be fine.

The trailer tells us that Amziah’s colonies get stolen. What it doesn’t tell us is that Amziah has a heart condition and this leads to him having a lethal stroke. He had changed his will and Ketari is now the beneficiary. However, the business was not doing well and the loss of all the colonies is going to kill it. So, Ketari sets out to get the colonies back.

She isn’t exactly a professional at this, but the community cared about Amziah, so they help. She still wants to keep it lowkey, because people do talk. But now this character piece is suddenly a thriller, a heist, a crime movie… The pacing is still unusual, but because they spent all that time to set the characters up, we care enough about this to not let that matter.

And even though those newly introduced elements can often get out of hand in other movies, this feels grounded. There’s some things that happen that should have been set up a bit better (like one character holds information from Ketari in a way that feels unnecessary), but things move fast now and you don’t have time to dwell on that. Is that good? I guess that’s up to you.

I liked this movie quite a bit. The pacing is what it is, but the characters do keep it afloat. It’s not even just the two main characters, but there’s plenty of people we see randomly that are fun enough to care about. They just let everyone be themselves. One of the minor characters has been in jail multiple times and that is not held against him. No-one ever says anything about one of the characters always being barefooted. There’s some casual racism, but it doesn’t feel hateful, just ignorance the characters freely admit to (although I have to say that as a white person, I can’t really comment on this, but this is the way I feel about it).