Somewhat spoilery, I'd say you should read anyway) The River Queen is an interesting, if a bit underwhelming experience. Throughout the whole movie, at least I for one, never felt invested in journey, and it seems that this is the main struggle of the movie – engaging the audience.
The movie tells the story of Sarah, an Irish medic in the English army on New Zealand. Mothering a half-caste with a native Maori, a young man who quickly goes on to die of the fever, Sarah raises their boy in the colonized ways. One day, however, the boy, which never gets any other name than "Boy", is taken by one of the more militarized tribes of Maori, as the tension between foreign settlers and natives escalates to war. Sarah sets out on a journey to find her son again, and while it is a decent premise for a plot, as mentioned the movie struggles telling the story in an interesting way.
Much to my begrudging side, the director is guilty in heavy use of shaky-cams, creative zooming and hasty editing. While maintaining a sense of, what, "realism", shaky-cams will never be engaging in my book, and I can't help to wonder why someone would even consider having a drunken cameraman all throughout the film. In River Queen, the method isn't used to the irritating degree, it isn't as dizzying as how the Hunger Games used it, but still I would definitely enjoyed the movie more had they decided to shoot it in a normal way.
If there is one thing the movie does get right it is scenery, music and effects, with these three factors done almost flawlessly. New Zealand no doubt has an amazing nature and wildlife, and the movie succeeds in portraying the rivers and forests as a last frontier between the European civilization and the native tribes. The music is a mix of native Maori and 1860s European, and when you're not assaulted by the wind blowing calmly through the grass, whistling just because it's the wind, man, it sets the atmosphere of colonization in the 1860s. The effects are, when not blurred out by a drunken cameraman and creative editing, good at portraying both the every-day life and nature, and the warzones and violence. There's little CGI, and since I'll never get my stop-motion robots from the eighties back, I would say it's refreshing to see a movie that is a little bit real and authentic.
More mediocre, if not disappointing, is the acting, with the main actress of Samantha Morton coming across as quite bland and uninteresting, with acting rather dependent on the different situations. As often as I found myself engaged in her journey, I also found myself quite fed-up with her role and the way she played it. Rather mediocre than bad, I guess it's unfair to blame the actress for the character, the writing could have been better. Some dialogues and scenes of long-lost-reunions (honestly, don't say you didn't see it coming, OOPS I'VE SAID TO MUCH) does not prove to be as satisfying and tearjerkery as they could have been. It's a shame, because Irish accents really are smashing, and there are times when Sarah isn't that bad a character. Better, if also quite bland, are the other main roles of Rawiri Pene as Boy, Kiefer Sutherland as Private Doyle, Cliff Curtis as Wiremu and Temuera Morrison as Te Kai Po. All of these are men of different meaning to Sarah's life and journey, and with the exception of a mediocre romance with a certain native, and the rather good performance of a certain chief, the actors are okay.
If there is one thing I would say about this movie though, it is that the war between the Maori and the Europeans is portrayed in a very good manner. It might just be me fancying grey areas at the moment, but I found some sub-plots coming out of the seemingly never-ending conflict way more interesting than the actual plot. With certain soldiers going fighting for such a long time they're not even sure what they're fighting for anymore, the movie gives an interesting and emotional peak into what these soldiers are going through. As families also were split up by this war, with brothers fighting brothers, the conflict comes across as more engaging and thought-provoking. The movie clearly stands a neutral ground, showing the thoughts of both sides, and showing both sides committing the atrocities of war, and at least I found this viewpoint interesting. (If a tad moralistic, but hey) I guess I would recommend it to you if you're interested in the time period, as the movie is quite good at portraying the era. However, if you're looking for a deep and emotional story of family, love and strong heroines, you would probably find it somewhat, well, mediocre, at least when it comes to engagement. By all means, watch it on a Sunday afternoon if there's nothing else to do, you would most likely find it a bit interesting, but if you're looking for something deeper, then you should look somewhere else. I'd say Aliens would be a good choice, if not just for the reason that it is a badass movie I would rather watch than this. But now I'm acting unfair.
Well bugger that, a person should be allowed to act unfair sometimes, elsewise I we would all be reduced to objective muck.
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