‘Gold’ Review: Zac Efron Grits Up in a Parched Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film CriticThis far into his screen career, it shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone that Zac Efron can act. He’s shown canny comic chops in the “Neighbors” films, wounded all-American ennui in “We Are Your Friends” and “At Any Price,” even a credible against-type chill as Ted Bundy in “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” — none of which has been enough to overtake his bland, floppy-banged, career-minting “High School Musical” persona in the popular imagination.

In “Gold,” an otherwise ordinary survival thriller from actor-director Anthony Hayes, Efron resorts to the same kind of extreme measures that fellow heartthrob Ryan Reynolds took to prove his worth in “Buried”: headlining a one-location genre piece so leanly conceived that it has scarcely anything to showcase but his commitment and grit.

As a lone drifter guarding a precious quarry in deadly desert conditions in a faintly futuristic nowhereland, he’s good, as anyone’s who been paying attention should expect.

Beyond that, it’s a somewhat arid exercise. A well-regarded character player in his native Australia, Hayes had a supporting role in David Michôd’s brooding, post-apocalyptic mood piece “The Rover” — which, coincidentally or otherwise, casts rather a long stylistic shadow over Hayes’ second feature as a director.