THE WATER DIVINER | FAMILY MOVIE REVIEW INFORMATION FOR PARENTS AND KIDS

"THE WATER DIVINER"
(2015) (Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko) (R)

QUICK TAKE:: Drama: In the aftermath of WWI, an Australian farmer travels to Turkey in hopes of finding his sons who were believed to have perished in the Battle of Gallipoli.

PLOT:

It's 1919 and Joshua Connor (RUSSELL CROWE) is an Australian farmer with a divining penchant for finding water in what's an otherwise parched part of the country. But much to the chagrin of his wife, Eliza (JACQUELINE MCKENZIE), he's been unable to find their three sons, Arthur (RYAN CORR), Edward (JAMES FRASER) and Henry (BEN O'TOOLE), who they last saw before they headed off to fight in WWI. Reports are that all three perished in the Battle of Gallipoli four years earlier, and anguished by the lack of closure, Eliza ends up taking her own life.

Determined to fulfill his promise to her to bring back their boys for burial, Joshua travels to Istanbul where a 10-year-old boy, Orhan (DYLAN GEORGIADES), manages to convince the foreigner to stay at a small hotel run by his mother, Ayshe (OLGA KURYLENKO), and her brother-in-law, Omer (STEVE BASTONI). Ayshe isn't happy to see the outsider, what with her husband having never returned from the same war fought against the British and their allies, but Orhan takes an immediate liking to Joshua and hopes that he'll be able to find his father.

Despite being denied a travel permit to head to Gallipoli, Joshua circumvents the rules and manages to get to the battlefield where he ends up meeting former war enemies Major Hasan (YILMAZ ERDOGAN) and Lt. Col. Cyril Hughes (JAI COURTNEY) who are now working together to find and identify some of the roughly two-thousand Brits and seven-thousand Turks who perished in the war. Cyril initially wants Joshua sent back, but Hasan senses something decent in the Aussie and agrees to assist on his quest. From that point on, and as he gets to know Ayshe better, Joshua does what he can to find out what happened to his sons and, if they all perished during the war, return their remains to their homeland.

WILL KIDS WANT TO SEE IT?: Older teens might be, but unless anyone else is a fan of Crowe or someone else in the cast, or has some interest in the Battle of Gallipoli and its aftermath, it's unlikely.

WHY THE MPAA RATED IT: R: For war violence including some disturbing images.

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