Film Review: ‪The Water Diviner

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The Water Diviner. Rated M (mature themes and violence). 111 minutes. Directed by Russell Crowe. Screenplay by Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios. 

Verdict: A terrifically assured directorial debut from Russell Crowe. 

 

For his directorial debut, Russell Crowe has wisely surrounded himself with the cream of the crop when it comes to creative collaborators. In the perfect company of production designer Chris Kennedy (The Road), editor Matt Villa (The Great Gatsby) and composer David Hirschfelder (The Railway Man, Shine), veteran, Oscar®-winning cinematographer Andrew Lesnie (The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, The Lovely Bones) beautifully accounts for the film’s visual ambition, which leaves Crowe to bring a fine actor’s eye to the storytelling detail. And it is a terrifically assured debut.

Joshua Connor (Crowe) and his wife Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie) are grieving the loss of their three sons at Gallipoli. While Eliza remains trapped in an ultimately futile charade, Connor copes by using his divining skills to build a well on their property. When Eliza succumbs to the hopelessness of their situation, Connor decides to travel to Turkey and bring his boys home so they can be buried next to their mother. 

The screenplay’s finely wrought vignettes that make up the majority of Connor’s dedicated search for his beloved sons combine to create an involving saga of one man’s determination to re-unite his family. The shocking final battlefield sequence involving Connor’s sons (led by a standout performance by Ryan Corr as Art), is overwhelmingly powerful in its bruality and finality. 

Having worked with some of Hollywood’s most influential directors (most notably Ridley Scott for Gladiator and Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind), Crowe’s directorial debut was always going to be an intriguing experience. To his absolute credit, we constantly find ourselves involved intimately in the characters’ journeys, with his camera determined to bear reliable witness to not only the terror of war, but the hope and optimism that love can bring to the ruins of a tragically interrupted life. 

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Man of Steel

Man of Steel. Rated M (science fiction violence). 143 minutes. Directed by Zack Snyder. Screenplay by David S Goyer.

Verdict: A potentially great film inexplicably loses its way and collapses into chaos.

There’s a defining moment in this fantastic, frenetic, but ultimately flawed telling of the Superman legend. Our hero Kal-El, played to furrowed-brow perfection by British Adonis Henry Cavill, is preparing to destroy the meglomaniacal General Zod’s (Michael Shannon) ‘world engine’ – a machine that is transforming the earth’s atmosphere into one that will no longer be inhabitable by humans. Having wrestled himself free of a shape-shifting metallic monstrosity, Superman summons all of his power and soars into the heart of the machine – powered there by an astonishing climax to Hans Zimmer’s (Inception, The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes) score – in an effort to restore balance to the planet. It is comic book perfection.

Snyder’s (Sucker Punch, Legend of the Guardians, Watchmen, 300) and Goyer’s work is undeniably at its best in the first two thirds of the film, and particularly the first act – where the self-destructing Krypton is superbly realised. Presided over by a fine, urgent and stately performance from Russell Crowe as Kal’El’s father Jor-El, the origins of the infant’s dispatch to Earth establish the conflict (that eventually grinds the remainder of the film into the ground) with an epic sense of a child’s (and a race’s) destiny.

The charting of young Clark’s journey to adulthood is equally involving, with an anti-narrative structure that takes us both forwards and backwards beautifully as the young man’s backstory is fleshed out. The scenes between Dylan Sprayberry’s anxiety-stricken 13-year-old Clark and Kevin Costner’s Jonathon Kent are deeply moving, while Diane Lane’s performance as the long-suffering, heroic Martha Kent is the best of the film.

The care the filmmakers have taken to establish a deeply heartfelt engagement with the story’s lead characters, makes its eventual collapse into chaotic, overly destructive, 9/11 exploitation simply impossible to justify. And, unforgivably, that sensation you will feel as Clark and Lois (a fine Amy Adams) kiss amongst the ruins of New York (sorry, Metropolis), is something like absolute bewilderment as to how something so right could have gone so horribly wrong.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Next Three Days

The Next Three Days. Rated M (violence and coarse language). 133 minutes. Written and directed by Paul Haggis. Based on the French film Pour Elle (Anything for Her).

Depending entirely on the extent of your patience for Haggis’ slow-burning build-up, The Next Three Days will either have you shouting “Get on with it!” at the screen, or sitting back and becoming totally immersed – chiefly as a result of Russell Crowe’s beautifully-controlled performance as John, a man determined to free his wife Lara (Elizabeth Banks in top form) from prison.

Haggis, who wrote the screenplays Casino Royale (2004), Million Dollar Baby (2004), and Crash (2004) – which he also directed – is equally determined to take his time. As John finds himself more and more frighteningly out of his comfort zone, Crowe absolutely rises to the occasion – and even though the heard-hearts will shake their heads at the implausibility of it all, those of us who have chosen to go along for the ride, will find immense satisfaction in the carefully considered and structured storytelling.

Danny Elfman’s (Alice in Wonderland, Milk, Wanted) score expertly guides the film’s gradually-increasing tension, while Stéphane Fontaine’s moody and intense cinematography is superb – ranging from the bleak clinical prison and hospital environments to the dangerous, dim, dark alleyways and back streets of suburban Pittsburgh, where John takes his life in his hands to secure key ingredients to his master plan.

Ty Simpkins is great as John and Lara’s surprisingly well-adjusted young son Luke, while Brian Dennehy and Helen Carey provide excellent support as John’s parents. As two Detectives charged with investigating Lara’s innocence, Jason Beghe and Aisha Hinds (True Blood) lend fine, stand-out comedic support, while Liam Neeson sets the tone of the whole affair perfectly in his blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo.

Ultimately, The Next Three Days might be considered as a bit of a guilty escapist (pardon the pun) pleasure – but an absolute pleasure nonetheless. The escape sequence, with split-second timing magnificently edited by Jo Francis, is real edge-of-your-seat stuff – with Haggis bringing home the classic “will-they-won’t-they?” thrills in fine style.

Pictured: Elizabeth Banks and Russell Crowe in The Next Three Days.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Robin Hood

Robin Hood. 148 minutes. Rated M. Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Brian Helgeland.

Make no mistake. We are now entering Big Motion Picture territory. Robin Hood, arguably one of the most eagerly-awaited and heavily-publicised big picture epics of the year has finally hit the big screen. So, is it any good? Yes, of course it is. It's one of the masters of cinematic storytelling Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator), at the helm, after all. Is it Scott's best film to date? No it's not (that's, for my money, still Alien). Is it Russell Crowe's greatest performance? No, it certainly is not (that's A Beautiful Mind closely followed by Romper Stomper). And what's Cate like? She's as marvellous as you'd expect an actress of her calibre to be. And this is the key to Robin Hood's most significant failing: everything is exactly as you expect it to be – that, and nothing more.

It is 1199, and archer Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) is a member of King Richard I's (The Lionheart) mighty army. When the King is killed in battle, Robin and his companions are freed to return home to England. Along the way, they discover that the King's Guard (charged with the safe return of the dead King's Crown) have been ambushed by the traitor Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong). After fighting to support their fellow Knights and wounding Godfrey in the process, Robin promises the mortally-wounded Sir Robert Loxley that he will honour his memory by returning his precious and unique sword to the dying knight's father Sir Walter (Max von Sydow) in Nottingham. Back in England, Richard's younger brother John (Oscar Isaac) is named the new King and the country is immediately plunged in chaos. Only the fearless Robin can empower the people to rise up and defeat the invading French forces.

Robin Hood is a serious, lead-footed and humourless film that lacks even one minute in its almost two and a half hour running time of genuine excitement. We anticipate nothing. And while the fine ensemble deliver excellent performances, the encyclopedic nature of Helgeland's (Green Zone, Mystic River) verbose screenplay constantly weighs them down with dialogue so entirely plot-driven and didactic, that not even the promise of light, or romance or personal conquest can shake the immense sense of foreboding that everything is going to play out precisely as we expect it to. And, almost without exception, it does.

Isaac is sensational as the tyrannical, juvenile King John and Strong is great as the evil, duplicitous Sir Godfrey. Von Sydow's spirited performance is all class, and Crowe plays Robin Hood with a great sense of nobility, humility, charity and charm. He belts along on horseback with the very best of them and his moments of wry humour are almost impossibly welcome. Regrettably, they are soon eradicated by yet more thundering hooves, clanging swords and bows and arrows. There's a ridiculous number of bows and arrows actually, which are photographed relentlessly from every possible angle.

With the peculiar exception of the last five minutes, Robin Hood is a film entirely lacking in irony, joy, intimacy or soul. Yes, it starts with a Big Battle (but nowhere near as big or as interesting as Gladiator's sensational opening sequence). It also almost ends with a Bigger Battle – but apart from some impressive aerial establishing shots of the French invasion, we're quickly back on the sand and in the water with yet more thundering hooves, clanging swords and whizzing arrows.

As it, relievedly, begins to wind up, its tone lightens and, for the first time, we sense a pulse – a heartbeat – a pure and restrained optimism and delight that has been chronically lacking from everything that has gone before. While England under the tumultuous reigns of King Richard and King John was quite obviously no fun whatsoever (expect, possibly, for them) – the result is a film that, somewhat perversely, is equally no fun whatsoever. None.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.