Alfred Hitchcock famously insisted that no one be seated in “Psycho” once the movie had started, lest they get to the famous twists without being fully invested in the story. The producers of “Gold” should consider stopping people from leaving the theater midway through, since the film so craftily changes directions that it transforms from a movie you don’t want to see into one that you do.
It’s not that the first half of “Gold” isn’t well-made, but it ambles along like a completely unironic “Wolf of Wall Street,” showing us a hardscrabble Nevada mining company beset by the 1980s recession before gambling everything on a gold strike in Indonesia.