Academy Award-winning actor Russell Crowe assumes double duty on both sides of the camera with The Water Diviner, the tale of an Australian farmer (Crowe) who, after the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, ventures to Turkey to discover what happened to his three missing sons who fought in the conflict. It is intriguing to watch Crowe, an action-oriented leading man (a decidedly more thinking man’s action hero, to be sure), start making the transition to even more thoughtful dramatic narratives while still engaging in a degree of derring-do and more mature wooing of his romantic opposite — here the lovely Olga Kurylenko as a Turkish hotel manager who offers her assistance to his cause. The tone of Diviner harkens back to Australian director Peter Weir (Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously) who teamed up with Crowe for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World more than a decade ago. (Opens Friday, April 24 at Esquire Theatre) (R) Not screened in time for review
This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2015.