Comic Book

Rating: 6/10 (24 May 2015)

This movie disintegrated as it moved along.
Its' starts off well enough with an Australian framer (Russell Crowe) and his wife who cannot face up to the fact that three of their sons (their only children) died in the Gallipoli fiasco during the First World War. It's all pretty somber – and after his wife's death our Australian farmer sets off for Gallipoli to find where his sons died – and bring the bodies back to Australia to bury them next to their mother.
This is the end of the serious phase. We now transition to romance and adventure.
Our farmer arrives in Istanbul – stumbles upon a young lad who brings him to a lavishly furnished inn where our farmer encounters the inn-keeper – the very alluring Olga Kurylenko. Her husband conveniently disappeared during the war. Initially she despises him – but we suspect this won't last too long. So now we have a budding romance. He sets off to Gallipoli to find his sons – and in short order befriends a Turkish general and locates two of his sons bodies. He returns to the inn – beats up an un-wanted suitor of the beautiful inn-keeper. So the romance is progressing – to the point where they examine coffee grains together (there is a lot of superstition floating about in this overly long drama). He sets off on another expedition with the Turkish general to locate the third son.
Father and lost son return to the inn – and all that is needed is to show them blissfully ensconced in the Australian outback farming happily ever after – father and newly found son – with his new Turkish wife and her son.
It all comes off as a wildly romantic adventure and implausible.