Olga Kurylenko

The Water Diviner (2014)

The Water Diviner (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, September 2019) Actors turning directors is always an interesting transition, especially in considering the kind of project they take on. In The Water Diviner, we have Russell Crowe choosing a post-WW1 drama as his first directorial project, as he plays an Australian rancher going back to Turkey to search for his three sons’ remains following the battle of Gallipoli. It’s not a cheery subject matter (in fact, it begins with the protagonist’s wife committing suicide out of pure despair), but the film itself is somewhat more upbeat than you’d suspect from the first act. Perhaps the most impressive element of the film, other than Crowe’s competent direction, is the credible historical recreation of 1919ish Turkey, featuring extended sequences in the trenches of Gallipoli as well. There’s a decent amount of adventure and action here as the protagonist has to face down numerous obstacles on the way to completing his quest. Crowe is quite good in the lead role, with Olga Kurylenko being unexpectedly compelling in a supporting role. The circa-WW1 era portrayed here is incredibly messy and the film simplifies a lot of it—indeed, I found myself wondering if they’d manage to mention the Armenian genocide à la The Passage, and they didn’t. Still, The Water Diviner does manage to get audiences invested early on in what could initially appear to be a remote and dour subject matter—and if the result falls short of being spectacular, it does have good moments, a compelling performance from Crowe as an actor, and decent-enough direction to avoid him any embarrassment.

Oblivion (2013)

Oblivion (2013)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Video on Demand, September 2013) For all of the nice things I have to say about Oblivion, there’s something just… off in the way it comes together.  The first few minutes don’t quite establish the required suspension of disbelief required for it to work smoothly: The visuals it presents don’t make a lot of sense and the pandering to modern lowest-denominator audiences seems blatant (let’s see: Yankees cap, Football stadium, dog, motorcycle and a cabin in the woods.  Yup, just one regular guy, no wacky sci-fi to see here…)  For viewers used to prose science-fiction Oblivion seems to pivot entirely on a familiar cognitive breakthrough structure, and the way it self-importantly reveals its secrets is a bit annoying, as if it expected audience’s minds to be blown apart by fairly obvious reveals.  The plot doesn’t quite seem to hold together the longer you look at it, and the visuals it shows (combining a ruined New York with what looks like epochal landscape alteration) are so nonsensical as to make anyone’s head hurt.  But let’s focus on the positive for a moment: It’s a science-fiction film that’s not explicitly based on existing intellectual properties, it features relatively original imagery (the “house in the clouds” is particularly nice) and it has the willingness to combine familiar tropes into a somewhat cohesive whole.  For writer/director Joseph Kosinski, it’s certainly a step up from the pretty-but-vapid Tron: Legacy.  Tom Cruise is overbearingly Tom Cruise-ish in the lead role (see “Yankees cap, football, motorcycle” above), but the supporting performances by Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko bring a bit of balance in the film.  While there’s little that’s objectionably wrong in Oblivion, it doesn’t click either, and that’s a more crucial problem in SF movies than in other genres due to the required suspension of disbelief.  While it certainly looks nice and feels more original than yet another sequel of a comic-book movie adaptation, it doesn’t seem to have enough heft to it, and given the nature of the film’s revelation it’s hard imagining watching this a second time for fun.