Crowe's directorial debut a bold, brutal quest for closure

It's bold, brawny and brutal.

Australian actor Russell Crowe's directorial debut "The Water Diviner" may not be so divine, but it resonates with beefy vibes of late 1970s/early 1980s Australian cinema at its most muscular and masculine measure.

The story takes place four years after an estimated 37,000 soldiers died in a massive battle on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey during World War I.

Three soldiers were the sons of Australian farmer Joshua Connor, played by Crowe.

"The Water Diviner" opens with Connor using divining rods to find a new well, which he starts digging in a short, crisply edited segment that celebrates the power and poetry of physical labor. At 15 feet down, he strikes a spring, and the rising water burbles over him in a baptism of joyous accomplishment.

Every night, the farmer reads "Arabian Nights" to three empty beds while his grief-stricken wife (Jacqueline McKenzie) listens with solemn eyes. One night, when the pain becomes inconsolable, she leaves the house and quietly slips under the water that had been a source of such joy minutes before.

Now, left with nothing but an empty farm house, Connor sets out to honor his pledge to find the bodies of his sons and bring them home.

Connor is a fictional character, but inspired by a sentence that screenwriter Andrew Anastasios found in a letter from officer Cyril Hughes at Gallipoli: "One old chap managed to get here from Australia looking for his son's grave."

It takes that old chap, Connor, three months to arrive at the blood-soaked stretch of land. He gets no cooperation from Australian authorities, and the Turkish officials have no incentive to help, either.

Connor's luggage gets swiped by a 10-year-old local kid named Orhan (Dylan Georgiades), who leads Connor on a desperate chase, until he guides the visitor to a hotel run by his mother, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), apparently the most beautiful woman in the country, and his Uncle Omer (Steve Bastoni).

Ayshe refuses to wear black, as custom dictates for widows, because she will not concede that her husband has been killed at Gallipoli. Omer, who has marriage rights to her being her husband's brother, becomes surly and impatient at her social defiance.

Yes, the romantic subplot between Connor and Ayshe becomes a transparently obvious convenience in the screenplay, one fraught with too many explosive battle flashbacks (was Crowe overly concerned about keeping viewers awake?) and an artificially rosy ending unsupported by events leading to it.

Nonetheless, "The Water Diviner" dishes out buckets of humanity, with Crowe refusing the good guys/bad guys approach, especially when it comes to depicting Turkish war veterans Major Hasan and Sgt. Jemal (Yilmaz Erdogan and Cem Yilmaz) helping the Aussie recovery effort.

When Hasan takes a sympathetic interest in Connor's quest, his sergeant asks why.

"Because he is the only father who came looking," he replies.

"The Water Diviner" brims with ambition and gorgeous digital camera work (from "Lord of the Rings" photographer Andrew Lesni, who reluctantly dropped plans to shoot 35 mm film after discovering the nearest processing lab was in Hungary).

Crowe makes good use of the "God's eye" perspective, with Lesni's camera high above the ground, looking down upon the players as if being watched by the deity of Connor's waning Catholic faith. Unfortunately, Crowe doesn't employ this device to any meaningful end.

Nor does he explore Connor's spiritual connections to the earth, or God, by his ability to locate water and his sons' bodies. Crowe places these religious flirtations on the same level as the superstitious fortunetelling done by Ayshe with coffee grounds.

"The Water Diviner" makes a proper bookend for Peter Weir's gritty 1981 drama, "Gallipoli," about two sprinters (one played by Mel Gibson) who couldn't outrun bullets. Crowe's drama also recalls the brawn and piano-scored soundtrack from George Miller's 1982 Aussie adventure "The Man From Snowy River."

It's a fitting film to open on the same weekend as Anzac Day (April 25), commemorating Australian and New Zealand troops who died at Gallipoli.

Note: Trailers for this movie ruin a key plot surprise, further evidence that spoiler trailers are public enemy No. 1 for true film fans.

“The Water Diviner”

★ ★ ★

Starring: Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Yilmaz Erdogan, Jai Courtney

Directed by: Russell Crowe

Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated R for violence. 111 minutes