Gold (2022) Parent Guide

Virgil (Zac Efron) is planning to make a dangerous journey across the post-apocalyptic wasteland to a compound which promises safety and opportunity. Crossing the desert is hazardous, and Virgil has decided to pay a local driver, Keith (Anthony Hayes) for passage. When the truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere, a short delay for repairs turns into something much, much bigger: A dig. Virgil stumbled onto a massive chunk of gold in the sand, and it’s too large for the pair to remove manually. One of them is going to have to stay behind and guard the treasure while the other goes into town to get an excavator. Not willing to trust Keith with the find, Virgil decides that he’ll remain with the gold. But Keith’s going to have to get back soon, because life in the desert is nearly impossible…

Shot in the Australian outback, the film is imbued with a sense of dangerous isolation, with barren sands stretching far away and scarce scrub bush under a merciless sky. The movie feels unpleasantly hot, a sensation amplified by Zac Efron’s increasingly burned and dehydrated features. Even his eyes seem to be bleached by the sun. His performance is similarly minimal, but that’s exactly what the role calls for. I had some concerns about a Hollywood heartthrob in a film this bleak, but he holds up admirably.

Unfortunately, the film might be a little too barren. Entirely too much of the runtime consists solely of Efron staring vaguely into the distance (or, on several occasions, directly into the sun for some reason), while the plot just waits around for something else to happen. The story is tense and interesting, but there just isn’t enough going on to keep you paying attention.

On the other hand, there’s a little too much going on for this to be suitable for a family audience, a fact supported by the film’s R rating. The biggest concern is the profanity, which based on the sparse nature of the script, I would estimate accounts for roughly half of all spoken dialogue. Then there’s some fairly graphic violence, which includes a person being eaten alive by wild dogs.

I wish I could recommend this film to adult thriller fans, but it just can’t seem to find its feet consistently. Interesting performances and an incredible location don’t compensate for a story which feels, for lack of a better word, a bit hollow. While the film doesn’t entirely waste the potential the story promises, it certainly doesn’t deliver all of it either. Not that I can entirely blame the filmmakers – if it were me out there in the desert, I would have done whatever it took to get out of there as soon as possible.