A bravura performance from Zac Efron headlines Gold, a survival thriller in which the rot of greed is presented in physical and symbolic form.

Director Anthony Hayes, in his second feature film, presents a bleak vision of a world gone to hell. We don’t necessarily know where Gold is based or what future timeline it is set in. What we do know is that the western world has collapsed upon itself, a blend of environmental and economic factors brought on by mankind’s ignorance and greed.

In this world we meet the nameless Man One (Zac Efron), a drifter on his way to a compound where work as a miner awaits him. His guide through this dustbowl terrain, Man Two (Anthony Hayes), is a gruff grifter whose personality is as confronting as his mullet haircut.

As they travel across an endless desert, they find a miracle: a colossal gold nugget embedded in the earth that would make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. When Hayes’ Man Two leaves to obtain an excavator, Efron’s Man One is left to guard their fortune in the face of an unforgiving and isolated landscape within which all matter of danger threatens to end his life, among them an all-consuming greed that will drive him to madness.

Efron delivers an impressive performance as an aimless soul whose physical and mental state is eroded and transformed into a mutilated and desperate form of being, driven only by his will to survive and attain his newfound “fortune”. Efron’s performances have often relied on his charisma and cocksure demeanour, yet Gold strips that away along with his classic handsome features, leaving only his blue eyes to pierce through his scabby, burnt, grimy and infected face.

Cinematographer Ross Giardina (Catch the Fair One) presents the films sandblasted scorched earth through a bronzed, diluted tone that never allows the vibrancy of creation to shine through, not in a world so far from God’s grace. The buzzing of flies and the sound of gulping water, so disgusting in its gaudiness, plays their part in a soundtrack that is as sparse yet effective as the films’ setting.

With Gold, Hayes has presented a film minimal in cast and setting, yet large in scope and idea. It is a bleak, uncompromising watch, yet one that provides a well-known actor the chance to strip his movie star sheen and deliver an uncompromising work.