SEATTLE — Matthew McConaughey is back in theaters this week with “The Rivals of Amziah King,” a film blending honey, bluegrass and second chances after the actor’s nearly five-year hiatus from movie acting.

The film, directed by Andrew Patterson, follows a beekeeping family caught in the cutthroat world of the honey business, where rival keepers steal from one another and tensions escalate into violence. The movie opens Friday and is rated R.

In an interview, McConaughey said the screenplay’s language and tone were what ultimately drew him back to acting after his time away.

“The language is poetic. The humor, the anarchic humor, the lack of sentiment with dealing with crisis and even tragedy and the way that you deal with humor to survive it,” McConaughey said. “You don’t feel any less pain, but you dance through it.”

The production included unscripted, high-risk moments, including scenes filmed with live bee swarms. Patterson described asking co-star Angelina LookingGlass, who has weeks of shooting left, to appear in a scene involving a large swarm and giving her the option to decline. She insisted on doing it anyway, he said.

LookingGlass, making her debut in a major movie role, said McConaughey helped her feel comfortable on set from their first meeting.

“He’s such a fatherly figure to me, like it’s just like a mentor,” she said.

Patterson said the film’s unconventional plot twists — the kind a major studio might have resisted — are part of what makes it distinctive.

McConaughey summed up the film’s spirit simply: “Everybody’s a legend in their own right. Everybody can sing. All you gotta do is try it. It’s not about right or wrong, and if it ain’t true, it ought to be.”