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River Queen (2005)

Director: Vincent Ward

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2 reviews

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From Time Out London

A yearning panpipe flutter or an obtrusive slo-mo flashback is never far away in Vincent Ward’s over-egged and under-cooked period piece, ‘River Queen’, a limp and unfocused jungle epic about a mother (Samantha Morton, decent) who loses her son to war. While the outré setting – 1860s New Zealand where indigenous Maori tribes are struggling to fend off European settlers – is certainly enough to pique the interest, you can never escape the fact that this story might have benefited from the composure and decisiveness of a Malick, a Mann or even (whisper it) a Costner to locate its pulse.

There’s no doubt, however, that Ward has a distinctive feel for combining colours on screen, yet he’s a visual stylist of limited creative breadth whose brash and busy compositions would perhaps have been better suited to a live-action Disney fantasia than a ‘serious’ costume drama. The pacing, too, is totally shot, with ‘emotional’ scenes needlessly (shamelessly, even) staggered to push the central maternal relationship.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London Issue 1956 Feb 13-19 2008

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User reviews of this film

Ross' sossage. said...

Posted on Feb 19 2008 12:07 This film is slighly less appealing that Ross jerking off in my bathroom.

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skin head Joe said...

Posted on Feb 19 2008 12:06 HELLO JOOE!!
its a poor film

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