Forced Prestige

Rating: 5/10 (29 June 2015)

The Water Diviner is Russell Crowe's directorial debut for a full-length feature. He takes a father's search for his sons into an adventurous scale. This is meant to be a quest of a man who has nothing left to lose, but suddenly finds empathy towards the people who he should blame. It sounds like a possibly complex drama, but the film chooses the typical direction of what normally results as a glossy cinema. While the star's inspiration from the films he's been does show in his directorial style, the soul rather follows the artificial and melodramatic roots which hardly makes it compelling.
The overall film hardly has any sense of subtlety, while it's obviously building some sentimentality, the first half is quite solid at making things seem bleaker, as emotions genuinely breathes through the scenery. When Connor starts interacting with the locals, it's sort of engaging at first, but these relationships only shines to the conventional extent. It's nice that the story has to play shades of gray with both cultures which are supposed to be against with each other, but these characters aren't given enough interesting, or more specific, fresh characterization. The kid is the typical kid best friend of the hero in many adventure movies and the lead female character is basically the unfortunate one who is getting an unwanted favor, but also hinting a romance to the protagonist. Without the fact that this is a true story or any of the dramatic schmaltz, this film might as well be some generic adventure movie, just with a little less action.
And that theory just keeps getting true. There is one point where the main character plays Cricket with some fellow soldiers on a train, and when they are suddenly attacked by some enemies, Connor happens to defend them with a Cricket bat. It seems more like a comedic moment you would find in a classic adventure film, but these kinds of strange moments that keeps showing up in this film just never felt like it even belonged here. Russell Crowe as a director seems to bring an "epic" treatment into this story, but with these choices being put together, it just gone otherworldly compared to its earnest and grounded first half. Moments of levity aren't bad, but it would have been more appropriate if it was more authentic and less contrived than what we saw. The direction is more impressive when the grandness is spoken on the visuals, like the flashback scene where Connor runs towards his children to protect them from a formidable dust storm. The acting is fine, with Crowe does his own thing while manages to invest some charm, but really, all of them eventually embraces the tone in the latter parts.
The Water Diviner is watchable enough, though it just shifts from an engaging bleakness to strange silliness. It somehow comes close to some Hallmark Hall of Fame or something. While the production and acting are at least impressive, it just can't completely gloss over to what the movie eventually become. There is a potential that this is going to involve a compelling theme about war or sacrifice, but what took over is the generic choices towards its characters and sentiments. It just isn't smart enough if it attempts to go through that level, therefore the journey ends up being rather disappointing.