well written well played

Rating: 10/10 (26 April 2015)

Crowe, making his debut as a director, clearly learned much at the elbow of Ridley Scott, on "Gladiator." There, similarly, Maximus was impelled, and made threatening, by the purity of his motive—to avenge the murder of his wife and child. There are touches of Spielberg, too, as Connor learns that one of his sons may have survived; as a result, the latter stages of the new film turn into "Saving Private Connor," as the father, like the hero of a parable, traverses the land in search of his lost sheep. He is aided by Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan), who commanded Turkish forces at Lone Pine, where the Connor boys were killed, and who himself has many dead to lament; the timbre of the movie owes much to Erdogan, an actor of gravity and charm, whom audiences here will have seen in "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" (2011). He and Crowe make a strong, unexcitable team, each as wry as the other, and Hasan doesn't even look surprised when Connor saves his life, in mid-fight, with judicious whacks of a cricket bat.