The Water Diviner

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Russell Crowe/Starring: Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Yilmaz Erdogan, Cem Yilmaz, Jai Courtney and Dylan Georgiades

The Water Diviner is one of those films directed by a major star which purportedly tells a true story; one that should be fairly compelling but is only competently told. Of course I'm also thinking of Angelina Jolie's relatively recent Unbroken, another middling story attempting to address the horrors of war. One might have expected Russell Crowe's feature film debut to garner as much attention and advance notice but curiously, I never saw one trailer for the film nor is it currently playing in more than one local theater. It arrives almost stillborn and it's easy to see why Warner Brothers had little confidence in the film; a promising beginning gives way to flaccid storytelling. What should have been a visceral experience became an okay history lesson; one that might only hold a passing interest to viewers.

Based on the story of an Australian man named Joshua Connor, whose three sons died in the Gallipoli Peninsula during the British and Australian armies bloody clash with the Turks in WWI. The Water Diviner, based on a book of the same title by Andrew Anastasios and Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios, tells the story of his quest to find and return his son's remains to Australia.

When the film begins, we see Connor (Russell Crowe) using a divining rod in the arid Australian desert to locate a water for a well. Wielding it with great skill, Connor is able to pinpoint an underground source; calling on a mystical sense that proves to be crucial later in the story. Connor returns home to his wife, who still insists her husband read The Arabian Nights to the three empty beds his sons once occupied.

The story takes a tragic turn when Connor's wife Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie), still tormented with grief four years after her son's deaths, takes her own. Bereaved, Connor decides to honor his wife's wish that her son's bodies be returned to Australian soil by traveling to Turkey.

Connor encounters many difficulties when he arrives. Not only must he contend with the exotic local culture, but Connor runs into a near impenetrable British and Australian military bureaucracy that forbids any civilian contact with the former battlefield. Fiercely determined to accomplish his mission, Connor is helped along by a family who runs the Istanbul hotel in which he lodges. A wife of a soldier who was reported lost in the battle, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), her young son Orhan (Dylan Georgiades) and her brother-in-law Omer (Steve Bastoni) play host to Connor while he tries to overcome the British army's restrictions. Ayshe is naturally averse to Connor's presence when she learns of his quest. But with the family's help, Connor is able to secure passage to the former battlefield, where Australian soldiers and two Turkish army officers lead the search for soldier's remains. The search proves to be an uneasy collaboration; foreign army presence and a battle that is still raw in Turkish memory complicate the effort. Though the Australian officer Lt. Col. Hughes (Jai Courtney) barely conceals his impatience with Connor's request to find his son's remains, the two Turkish officers, Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan) and Cemal (Cem Yilmaz) are more sympathetic. As Major Hasan explains, "He is the only father who came to the battlefield." Hughes reluctantly allows Connor to assist in the search for his sons.

The wounds of war run deep for both sides as Major Hasan, a participant in the former battle, offers Hughes specific, geographic details about fighting itself.

As he wanders the battlefield, Connor's uncanny water-divining skills serve him well as he manages to locate the remains of two sons. Puzzled as to why his third son isn't among the remains, the search resumes.

While the exhumations continue, the Turkish officers receive word that the Greeks have attacked the Turkish coast, which triggers nationalistic fervor across the country and a renewed contempt for English and Australians alike.

With his unerring sixth sense, Connor determines his third son may be alive and though Major Hasan and Cemal initially refuse additional assistance, they eventually relent.

Meanwhile, Connor becomes embroiled in Ayshe's domestic troubles. Ayshe tries desperately to fend off Omer's aggressive efforts to marry; her objections stemming from her belief her husband could still be alive. Connor unwisely intervenes in a violent exchange between the two; inadvertently inviting an assault upon his person by Omer and his thuggish friends.

Connor eventually learns of the monastery where his son may be kept and with the help of Major Hasan and Cemal, he joins them and other soldiers on a battle-bound train, which results in a small disaster.

The end of Connor's search leads to what seems like a forgone conclusion though a twist of sorts provides some surprise. And-by-the-way subtitles about WWI casualties and those missing in battle precede the end credits but they seem unnecessary. Don't we know by now that WWI was the 20th century's first major meat grinder?

Why doesn't this story work? Where did Crowe fail? Alas, skilled actors rarely make good directors and though Crowe gives the old college try, he can't transmute material with great potential into dramatic gold. It isn't difficult to capture the Australian outback and Turkish landscape in breathtaking long shots or the inside of mosque, where Connor stares transfixed at a beautiful, blue cupola. More challenging is drawing strong, convincing performances from a cast, which he does reasonably well though Dylan Georgiades is little more than a cute kid.

The battle scenes, where we see two of Connor's sons meet their demise, should be horrific and yet they could be any WWI combat sequence from any war movie. Of course the film will evoke memories of Peter Weir's splendid Gallipoli; whose depiction of the battle was attended by a wrenching immediacy, which left the audience with a profound sense of loss and futility.

The Water Diviner belongs on television as a Showtime or HBO original, not as a theatrical release. It might be a very welcome presence on a small screen, where its modest narrative ambitions and sweeping visuals might beguile a late night audience. But on a multiplex screen, it makes for mediocre matinee fare.

The November Man

**Spoiler Alert**
Director: Roger Donaldson/Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, Olga Kurylenko and Will Patton

The problem with The November Man is that I can't recall the names of the other movies whose plots it mimics, re-works or merely robs. Strangely enough, it didn't evoke a yawn and thanks to Pierce Brosnan's magnetism, it proved to be mostly digestable.

The film resuscitates the elder-agent-trains-a-protege-who-is-one-day-asked-to-liquidate-his-father-figure/teacher-thereby-causing-angst-doubt-and-trepidation-for-the-former-student plot that has been given a workout in recent years. If that seems like one too many dashes for you, know I spared you many more.

Pierce Brosnan plays Peter Devereaux, a former CIA agent now living in Switzerland sans the occupational hazards he faced in his former life. In the film's opening scene, we watch Devereaux in action during a past operation in Montenegro which took place five years before. Devereaux's protege is the young, handsome David Mason (Luke Bracey), who is warned about getting involved with women after the callow agent shares an intimate moment with a waitress in an outdoor cafe.
Not long after, the two men are part of a task force assigned to protect an ambassador. During the Ambassador's public speech, Mason mans a sniper rifle inside a hotel room, monitoring the crowd for potential targets. When a shooter reveals himself, Mason's gunfire not only strikes his target but a small child as well. The incident casts a dark cloud of failure as a mentor on Devereaux and is supposed to serve as an harbinger of future conflict between the two men.

In present-day Switzerland, Devereaux is coerced out of retirement by a former fellow CIA colleague. His mission is to pull an agent working close to a Russian politician named Arkady Federov (Lazar Ristovski), out of the country before her identity and mission are exposed. The CIA wants information on Arkady, which concerns an incident in his past that is sure to cripple his Presidential ambitions if brought to light. The agent working close to Arkady is a woman we learn is Devereaux's ex-lover, Natalia Ulanova (Mediha Musliovic), who is also the mother of his child. Mason, who is now a veteran CIA operative, leads a mission which works at cross-purposes with Devereaux's, as he is assigned the task of eliminating Ulanova. During a high speed pursuit, Ulanova's car crashes, leaving her exposed to Mason, who picks her off with his sniper rifle. Before Devereaux can escape, Mason identifies him, which brings him to the attention of Mason's superiors at Langley.

The story shifts to Belgrade, Serbia, where a young woman named Alice, (Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko) who operates a refuge for former prostitutes, becomes a target of Federov. The Russian presidential-hopeful is hell-bent on eliminating everyone from his past who may know something about his nefarious, mysterious deed, including Alice. Federov's assassin, a nasty piece of work named Alexa (played with venom and malice by Amila Terzimehic) is on Alice's trail, as is Mason, who has also been assigned the task of killing Devereaux for obstructing the CIA operation in Moscow. Devereaux becomes Alice's protector from all who want her eliminated. Get all that?

We eventually learn what dark, devastating secret both the CIA, Federov and Alice are concealing. Mixed into this tangle of a plot is the cat and mouse game between Devereaux and Mason, which becomes an uninteresting narrative thread but one Donaldson must pursue obligatorily to its end.

The story holds one's interest for most of the film. Donaldson is a seasoned pro with thrillers and is able to keep the byzantine plot from bogging down in confusing details. The problem with the plot, which is supposed to be the film's narrative centerpiece; is the dual between Devereaux and Mason. Their conflict interrupts the momentum of Federov/Alice story, which is the film's plot strength. It also burdens the movie with some implausible moments, like Devereaux seeking out Mason in his apartment, where he holds a knife to his girlfriend's throat. If the scene is supposed to ratchet up the tension between the two it comes off more as a head-scratcher. Why seek out your would-be assassin and give him an opportunity to kill you to make a point that seems nebulous at best? It hobbles the narrative and creates a lapse in logic that causes the movie to stumble.

The Devereaux/Mason melee is also just not very interesting. Though Bracey learns Devereaux gave him a failing grade on a CIA trainee assessment report, we never feel he overcomes his mentor's assessment. I wish Mason were as intriguing as Alexa, whose lethal single-mindedness made her a more formidable character.

So we have a former Bond and a former Bond girl (Kurylenko) together onscreen again. Devereaux is less suave than Bond but he's just as indestructible.

The film exceeded my low expectations, but didn't budge any further than that. It was an acceptable excuse to escape a warm and steamy afternoon. It didn't lull me into REM sleep but if you ask me about the film next weekend, I may have trouble recalling any details. If pressed, I'll say I remember Brosnan, an exotic Ukrainian woman and some dull American actor as the film's co-stud. I might even remember...er...uh--wait a minute, what were we talking about?