Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a new review of Vincent Ward's RIVER QUEEN, a New Zealand flick starring Samantha Morton and Keifer Sutherland. This reviewer caught the film at a cast and crew/media screening Auckland yesterday and goes against the grain since the other early word we've gotten on this film has been pretty positive. "The Bauer Beard" really didn't care for the film, citing the much publicized trouble production, and even left before the end. I'm looking forward to it myself. I'm fascinated by the Maori culture and tons of New Zealand landscape is always something to look forward to. I'm also one of the six mentals who enjoyed Ward's previous flick WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, so...
Here's the review!
Look, the shoot was troubled, the set had issues, the director was fired a few month before finishing, there were accidents, the lead actress got sick, Keifer got bored and went home, the movie was cursed by local iwi, should I make more excuses?
I’m talking River Queen, I saw it tonight; it’s the latest in a line of NZ movies that have sprung from our deep, fresh wells of creative talent, untouched by the cruel Hollywood filth. Our film is less an industry, more a commune; it’s what Tolkien dreamed of England staying, crisp and green. We make pure film, for the love of it, unafraid of long running times and sweeping camera shots. We’ve kept our natural beauty, isolated on a couple of islands covered with lush bush and fat healthy sheep, or is that the other way round?
Any film growing in an environment this healthy should be good for the body and great for the mind. River Queen is neither, it’s like ketamine, very confusing, slightly unnerving and curiously detached. Like ketamine it’ll also probably become something people fall back on cause they can’t get any better, it’ll be the NZ film people will rent cause Lord of the Rings, King Kong and even A Dog’s Tale are out…
This is where those excuses come in handy, cause underneath the confusion there is a slightly interesting story. We begin at the furthest frontier outpost in deep dark New Zealand, it’s 1896, there’s a uneasy truce with the native Maori’s. We’re introduced to Samantha Morton who’s the daughter of a surgeon, she had a fling with some Maori guy who died and left her with a kid. Then there’s Private… something, played by Keifer, he likes her and is hanging around chopping wood and speaking scottishly, ach. So anyway, the Maoris pinch the kid and train him up to be one of them. Sam tries to track him down, but left her precog powers with Tom Cruise and has to wait seven years till the Maori boss gets sick, long story short, she goes to the Maori base to heal him and ends up living there Dances with Wolves style. Meets the kid, he’s a Maori now = tension, hot Maori dude, Keifer and the British invade, divided loyalties ensue. More stuff happened, but that’s as far as I got, my mate texted me and I left early to grab a drink with him.
By the way, Keif doesn’t kick as much ass, now that he’s Scottish. You’re sitting there the whole time waiting for the gravitas to kick in, and occasionally it almost does, but it’s just messing with ya, dammit! It’s annoying, but my Bauer habit is being satisfied again anyway, so who cares.
I could give lots of technical reasons why this movie sucked, but I think it’s just that so much crap went down on the shoot they got sick of it and wanted it over. It’s weirdly edited, and visually confusing when it doesn’t really need to be. It’s an indication that NZ film can be just as crap as American and British stuff, but hey, we’re not in the gutter with Bolivia or Australia (I kid!) just yet.
from
The Bauer Beard!
