The Water Diviner
Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: April 24, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
50
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
19
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 23, 2015
A first-rate post-World War I drama with a heavy dose of sentiment and a gripping storyline. Read full review
80
Total FilmPhilip KempMar 30, 2015
The film’s only let down by its too-frequent recourse to narrative cliché. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleApr 23, 2015
Crowe is not messing around here, not trying to dream up opportunities to throw himself another close-up. He’s a genuine director. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 23, 2015
In The Water Diviner, Crowe strives to strike a universal chord about the futility of war. Simplistic? Maybe. But in crafting a film about the pain a parent feels after losing a child in battle, Crowe transcends borders and politics. It's not war being honored here, it's sacrifice and inconsolable loss. I'd call that a substantial achievement. Read full review
75
TheWrapInkoo KangApr 23, 2015
Crowe’s beauty-seeking, but exoticizing camera is slightly outmatched by his performance, which anchors the film with regret tinged with hope. But what continues to haunt after the credits finish rolling are the film’s explorations of the trauma of life after war: The brutally quick political shifts, the lingering shame of committing vicious and dishonorable acts, and the bitter knowledge that there’s no such thing as lasting peace. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartApr 22, 2015
Crowe makes the most of his own quiet presence, and this ode to the world’s never-recovered soldiers and their families is a fitting meditation on the insanity of war. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 23, 2015
The story takes some unexpected turns, which Crowe handles well, without overplaying them. Overall, The Water Diviner is a solid effort, a good, old-fashioned movie when it's not delving into soap opera. Read full review
70
Screen DailyFrank HatherleyMar 30, 2015
The Water Diviner is a heart-warming tale of family, love and sacrifice told with four-square enthusiasm and manliness by director and star Russell Crowe. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterMegan LehmannDec 9, 2014
The film gives a lot of space to emotions, but Crowe reins in his outsized personality to contribute an affecting, understated performance and, as director, underplays the allegories, particularly the recurring water motif, so they seep through the narrative organically. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 24, 2015
After toiling for the likes of Ridley Scott, Ron Howard, and Peter Weir all these years, Crowe takes command of his own camera crews and castmates, mounting an ambitious and sentimental period drama. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliApr 24, 2015
The final production is so jammed with subplots and secondary characters that it often feels like the Cliffs Notes version of a complex novel. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 23, 2015
This big, brawny historical drama feels more personal to its maker as both an artist and an Australian. For better and for worse, the movie’s a labor of love and of national identification. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsApr 23, 2015
Crowe is effectively restrained in his acting, but in his debut as a director, he overdoes the manipulative music and the pretty images from cinematographer Andrew Lesnie. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 22, 2015
The performances are moving and get the job done, and Kurylenko (“Quantum of Solace”) wins us over by the way she slowly lets Connor, her enemy, win her sympathy. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonCath ClarkeMar 30, 2015
The Water Diviner is solid and old-fashioned. Read full review
60
EmpireIan FreerMar 30, 2015
It’s an odd mix of "Saving Private Ryan" odyssey and romantic melodrama. It has sincerity, sensitivity and is often ravishing to look at but is let down by a chocolate box love story. Still, Crowe still might have a "Braveheart"/"Dances With Wolves" in him yet. Read full review
60
The GuardianLuke BuckmasterDec 9, 2014
A handsome crowdpleaser with a big heart. Read full review
60
VarietyEddie CockrellDec 9, 2014
An often capriciously mixed cocktail of war film and cross-cultural family melodrama, The Water Diviner marks an ambitious if emotionally manipulative directing debut for Russell Crowe. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerApr 24, 2015
A sloggy, heartfelt piece of quasi-magical realist storytelling. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriApr 26, 2015
If only Crowe brought the same subtlety to his direction that he brings to his performance. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzApr 24, 2015
The film's fuzzy mystical undertones are irksome as well. They seem less aligned with 19th century representations of Christian or Muslim spirituality than with fond childhood memories of "Star Wars." Read full review
50
Portland OregonianJeff BakerApr 23, 2015
Crowe is a commanding lead actor who could have made it into something special if he'd stayed out of his own way. Maybe he should have stayed home. You should. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Brad WheelerApr 23, 2015
But just as Anzac troops had quite a go of it in Gallipoli, Crowe (who also stars as the doggedly bereaved father and exceptional well-digger here) is in tough with critic-historians aghast at The Water Diviner’s pro-Turkish slant. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 23, 2015
Crowe's feature directorial debut, The Water Diviner, stems from an honest impulse to dramatize ordinary people who honor their dead. Yet the results are narratively dishonest and emotionally a little cheap. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigApr 23, 2015
Crowe's performance is the best thing about the ambitious historical drama, which takes some artistic liberties. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 23, 2015
Crowe clearly seeks to return to classic storytelling values with this sweeping-yet-intimate, serious-yet-swashbuckling, hither-yet-thither picaresque; that he succeeds only part of the time shouldn’t detract from the worthiness of his mission. Read full review
50
Village VoiceNick SchagerApr 23, 2015
Crowe's visual framing and dramatic staging are as assured as his compelling lead performance. Yet as his story becomes weighed down by issues of cross-cultural understanding, forgiveness, and second chances...the film comes to feel like a slight, straightforward tale distended to tedious lengths. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyApr 22, 2015
His (Crowe) movie is a male weepie, slickly lit, but clearly the work of an amateur. Its emotional thrust — the search — is made limp by indiscriminate direction and the kind of quantity-over-quality mindset that invites tacked-on romances and dream sequences that play like dream-sequence parodies. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedApr 22, 2015
As a director, Mr. Crowe’s camera meanders all over the place; as an actor, he mumbles and growls his way through the carnage like it was nothing more important than a re-make of Gladiator, filmed on old sets from Gene Autry westerns. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineMatt BrennanApr 19, 2015
In straining for the profound, the film ultimately loses its way in a veritable no-man's land of ill-conceived stylistic choices and narrative switchbacks. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierApr 30, 2015
Despite the incongruous romance and abrupt action beats, Crowe gives a likable, sympathetic performance. But it all starts to dry up before our eyes. Emotions feel false or melodramatic, flashbacks are drawn out and coincidences and connections are forced. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenApr 23, 2015
It's an unsurprisingly ambitious movie from the notoriously, proudly headstrong Crowe, which makes it such a disappointment that it feels so blandly earnest and unexpectedly hesitant, with none of the unnerving conviction the actor often brings even to lightweight promotional appearances. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovApr 22, 2015
A far more profound and moving film about this particularly Aussie/Kiwi campaign (and one that will probably never be topped) is Peter Weir’s devastating Gallipoli, starring a very young Mel Gibson. Given the choice, I’ll take that over Crowe’s earnest bombast any day. Read full review
30
The New York TimesManohla DargisApr 23, 2015
You don’t have to be a historian to wonder about the timing of the opening or a critic to regret that Mr. Crowe has signed onto a preposterous, would-be sweeping historical romance that’s far too slight and silly to carry the weight of real history. Read full review
30
The DissolveScott TobiasApr 23, 2015
Sorting through the shards of the Ottoman Empire requires a historical complexity that eludes Crowe, who flattens the landscape into bromides on family and country, and the hard-won glories of being Russell Crowe. His on-screen persona could stand to be as modest as his filmmaking abilities. Read full review
0
SalonAndrew O'HehirApr 23, 2015
I have to assume that Russell Crowe and Warner Bros. did not deliberately set out to insult and anger the Armenian diaspora and its friends around the world, or to participate in covering up a monumental 20th-century crime that shaped the world we live in and remains swathed in too much historical shadow. They disgraced themselves by making this movie the way they did, and then redoubled the disgrace by releasing it this week. Read full review
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