The Water Diviner (2014)

Directed by Russell Crowe. Starring Russell Crowe, Yılmaz Erdoğan, Olga Kurylenko, Jai Courtney, Dylan Georgiades, Steve Bastoni, Cem Yılmaz, Ryan Corr, Jacqueline McKenzie. [R]

Reeling from the loss of his three sons at war (on the same day…at the same battle…in the same spot…) and the subsequent suicide of his wife, Aussie dowser Crowe travels to Turkey to recover the boys’ bodies so they can be buried with their departed mom, but tracking them down and cutting through the military/government red tape is no easy feat. Making his directorial debut, Crowe gets the customary solid performance out of himself, but is more uncertain about visual and emotional strategies, and inexperience (coupled, perhaps, with budget limitations) result in a handful of phony-looking episodes: the opening battle scene, a sandstorm, etc. The protagonist’s journey can sometimes be hard to swallow (he practically becomes an action hero during a couple of sequences toward the end), and there’s a tacked-on and unconvincing romance between him and the comely war widow (Kurylenko) who runs the hotel he’s staying at in Istanbul. Some may be offended by the way it white-washes history and lets Turkey “off the hook” for atrocities, but there’s too little fire in the storytelling to rouse much passion either way; even the sentimentality at the end is restrained to the point of sterilization. Based on the same-named book, whose co-author (Andrew Anastassios) worked on the screenplay with Andrew Knight.

51/100