Gone Direct-to-DVD: February 2009
By Robert Sims, Hollywood.com Staff
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Monday, March 02, 2009
7. River Queen
Cast: Samantha Morton, Kiefer Sutherland, Cliff Curtis, Stephen Rea
The Verdict: After fleeing Alien 3 in frustration and watching What Dreams May Come disintegrate, director Vincent Ward returns to his native New Zealand to put his Hollywood experiences behind him. Sadly, this visually stunning historical epic is another disappointment from Ward, who has yet to live up to the potential of his iconic 1988 time-travel think piece The Navigators. River Queen chronicles in plodding, meandering and uninvolving fashion a bloody conflict between a Maori tribe and ruthless English settlers. Morton’s oddly aloof as the white woman torn between her own people and her half-Maori son. Her trials and tribulations, though, never prove to be as compelling as those experienced by Curtis during his transformation from English collaborator to proud Maori warrior.
DVD Features: None.
Stars: 2 out of 5
KEEP READING: See No. 6 …