Matthew McConaughey continues one of Hollywood’s most unlikely comebacks with another triumph as a feral fugitive in “Mud,’’ a wonderful, piquant modern-day variation on “Huckleberry Finn.’’
The Huck in Jeff Nichols’ film is 14-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan), whose life in a ramshackle houseboat on the Mississippi River in Arkansas gets swamped when his mom (Sarah Paulson) decides to leave his gruff but loving fisherman dad (Ray McKinnon).
Ellis finds an unlikely parental substitute in McConaughey’s disheveled, broken-toothed Mud. The boy and his pal Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) discover Mud living on an island in the river, where Mud has taken up residence in a boat stuck in a tree after a long-ago flood.
Mud confesses that he’s being hunted by the law because he killed a man, and offers the boys his gun if they will help him elude detection and bring him food.
Ellis, along with his friend, agrees to the deal because, at heart, he’s a hopeless romantic. He punched out a bigger kid who was roughing up an older girl, then deluded himself into believing the girl, who goes on one date with him out of gratitude, is now his girlfriend.
Mud blames the murder he committed on love, insisting he was trying to protect the honor of his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) who has just turned up in the town’s strip mall in short shorts for a rendezvous.
When Ellis goes to the man who raised Mud (Sam Shepard) — a mysterious river dweller who may or may not have been a CIA sniper in an earlier life — for help, the old man warns him not to believe anything Mud says.
Juniper, the old man says, has been cheating on Mud for all the years he’s been chasing her across the country.
Ellis, who desperately needs to believe in fidelity because of his parents’ fraying marriage, of course stubbornly refuses to believe any of this.
He doubles down by agreeing to pass messages between Mud and Juniper, even though the politically influential father (Joe Don Baker) of the man Mud killed has brought in an army of armed bounty hunters to help the law track down Mud.
It’s a classic coming-of-age story, fraught with disillusionment on young Ellis’ part as he increasingly puts himself and Neckbone at emotional and physical risk while scavenging parts so the stranded boat can become Mud’s getaway vehicle.
I wasn’t a huge fan of director Nichols’ previous film, the critically praised “Take Shelter,’’ which built up an interesting doomsday situation but refused to deliver any kind of satisfying payoff (that film’s star, Michael Shannon, has a comic-relief cameo as the uncle who is rather casually looking after Neckbone).
Nichols’ follow-up is a more fully realized and shapely vision, with terrific Southern atmosphere achieved with the help of cinematographer Adam Stone.
The performances are all first-rate, with McConaughey providing the necessary charisma to make Mud a likable if not exactly lovable rogue.
Tye Sheridan is given an opportunity to show off the intensity that he hinted at in his mostly nonspeaking role as Brad Pitt’s disaffected son in “The Tree of Life.’’
Witherspoon — whose husband, with whom she was arrested with last weekend for disorderly conduct and DUI, respectively, is the director’s agent — does her best acting since “Walk the Line’’ in a small but crucial role as the slutty Juniper.
“Mud’’ runs over two hours, climaxing with a shootout that belongs in a different movie. It’s a rare misstep in an art-house movie that will pull mainstream audiences along as inexorably as the Mississippi River. Go see it.