"The Water Diviner" leaves befuddling deluge of sentiments

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Russell Crowe in a scene from "The Water Diviner." (Mark Rogers/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

For many Americans, Gallipoli, the central battle in “The Water Diviner” might have only been a blip in a memory of a long forgotten high school history class — if it was covered at all. But it is seared into the collective consciousness of Australia and New Zealand who lost roughly 44,000 men. (And worse still for the Ottomans, who suffered some 87,000 causalities).

This is backdrop to Russell Crowe’s directorial debut. The main story, if you can call it that, focuses on an Australian farmer who goes searching for his sons’ graves four years after the bloody battle. The premise is at once compelling and heart-rending. Yet the execution of the story is like that of a novice. Oscillating between protagonists, and genre-types, it left me feeling disconcerted and emotionally raw. It’s as though the movie couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a serious war film or a swash-buckling adventure flick.

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