Director Russell Crowe
Starring Jai Courtney, Olga Kurylenko, Russell Crowe
Rated M
Score 5/6

An Australian man travels to Turkey after the Battle of Gallipoli to try and locate his three missing sons.

Two Australian Movies released within a month of each other. Yes I am in good mood. Part of me kind of expected that considering the historical backdrop of the movie that it would have been released in Australia around March or April 2015 instead as one of the Boxing Day releases, though I am glad that I caught an advanced screening this weekend. I read in article in the Australian how The Water Diviner was inspired from a line in a letter from an Australian Lieutenant Colonel Cyril Hughes to journalist CW Bean “One old chap managed to get here from Australia, looking for his son’s grave”.
This was a pretty interesting directorial debut for Russell Crowe, this is something that I should have dragged my dad along to see it with me because this definitely a ‘Father & son’ kind of movie. Maybe I’ll go again to see it with him if he goes, though I will be dam sure to watch this with him when it comes out on DVD. Crowe gave a great performance and you can’t help but admire his character just a little bit. I was also impressed with Yilmaz Erdogan’s performance, if I get the chance I might try to check out some of the other movies that he has stared in if I get the chance to.
The Water Diviner asked an interesting question about Australia’s involvement in World War 1 and if the ‘King and Country’ rhetoric was enough to justify Australia going to war because there was a quote from one of the Turkish soldiers in the movie that goes along the lines of “Don’t invade a country if you don’t know where it is”.