Of Mud and men – Indie director Jeff Nichol’s Mud follows two 14-year-old boys who sneak away from their homes.

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Beginning with one of those intense, early morning cravings for adventure that lap like incessant waves against the shores of youth, indie director Jeff Nichol’s Mud follows two 14-year-old boys who sneak away from their rural Arkansas homes to a slice of an island in the middle of the Mississippi looking for a battered boat left hanging suspended in the high branches of a tree after an epic flood.

The richly detailed, near mythic archetypes are hammered in place already even before the boys, Ellis and Neckbone, cross paths with the titular character, a tattooed and superstitious hangdog living in secret on the island inside the boat the boys are after. Turns out Mud, played by Matthew McConaughey, whose career is in the middle of an impressive indie revolution, is a wanted man. With both police and bounty hunters on his tracks, as he risks his life for a chance to rendezvoux with the hardscrabble woman he loves to an absolute fault.

In these optimistic young thrill-seekers, Mud finds two allies, and they agree to help him get this boat seaworthy and pass messages to the woman, played free-spirited and wounded by Reese Witherspoon. Seeing McConaughey and Witherspoon both out of their ordinary romantic comedy modes is a welcome shock, and the tension of their ripped-apart chemisty.

Gorgeously shot without veering into overly showy nature porn—surely a temptation given much of the movie’s cascading, waterborne setting—and peopled with intensely intriguing blue-collar characters, Nichols’ film is a must-see drama about the subversion of expectations, the shifting perceptions of attraction and the pain and complications that often caboose that crazy little thing called love.

Though his look is more Jack Sparrow-surly, McConaughey does well to play Mud far more internal and lyrical, a caged animal that stands like a grey-shaded mystery to these impressionable boys even as he’s a no-questions-asked target of the law for past deeds.

While newcomer Jacob Lofland is endearing both for his sarcastic potty mouth and his remarkable likeness to a young River Phoenix—one of the more overt references to the similarly-toned Stand By Me—it is his on-screen buddy Tye Sheridan who shines as a serious future talent. With a role in Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life already under his belt and a co-starring turn in David Gordon Green’s Joe next year, Sheridan is a young actor to watch.

Mud is available on Video on Demand from Lionsgate. Watch the trailer below: