Crowe's solid directorial debut

Rating: 7/10 (19 April 2015)

Quickie Review:
After the death of his three sons in the WWI Battle of Gallipoli, devastated by the loss Connor's (Russell Crowe) wife takes her own life. To fulfill her last wish, Connor travels to Turkey to return their sons' bodies back to Australia, their home. The Water Diviner is both well-acted and filmed. The movie fully develops its character while fairly showing the perspectives from both sides affected by the war. It is not without flaws in that it occasionally adds melodrama to the war drama. Still as a whole this is a solid directorial debut by Russell Crowe.
Full Review:
To be honest, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this movie. I rarely heard people talk about it and I only found out this movie even existed about a month or so ago. Nevertheless, I went in curious to see what Russell Crowe delivers as a director and mostly I liked what he achieved.
The performances in The Water Diviner are really good. That's not surprising from the talented Russell Crowe but Olga Kurylenko did some of her best work here as well. I always thought Kurylenko was a serviceable actress but in this movie she actually shows some range. Asides from the performances, I appreciated the different perspectives that were shown from the people involved in the war. War dramas can at times fall into the trap of painting the different sides black or white. Fortunately The Water Diviner recognizes and presents the fact that both sides have their guilty executioners and innocent victims just caught in the middle of a senseless war. So the delicate handling of such a subject matter should be commended. Also the cinematography of the movie was quite impressive, capturing the life and landscape of the early 1900s Turkey.
What hindered the movie from being great for me were the moments where the movie got a bit too melodramatic. I can't say much without revealing some of the plot points but these were scenes that clearly Crowe wanted the audience to be emotionally affected. However, the scenes are repeated so often or prolonged for so long that they started to lose their effect on me and felt like I was being begged to shed a tear. On top of that, all too often there are so many coincidences, the movie almost becomes a fantasy rather than a serious war drama. These series of coincidences solve many of the problems that Crowe's character faced, wrapping up in a nice little bow. It diminishes any sense of struggle and as a result I ended up being less invested whenever the characters were in danger.
All in all The Water Diviner is a good movie. I just wish the movie wasn't pandering to our emotions and instead let the story unfold more organically. Nevertheless, considering this is the first feature length film as a director for Russell Crowe I am interested to see what he takes on next.
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