River Queen

Would that director Vincent Ward's embattled "River Queen" might have emerged unscathed from its troubled, headline-making production. This longtime dream project for the acclaimed Kiwi helmer -- and his first pic since "What Dreams May Come" in 1998 -- finally reaches the screen as a waterlogged would-be epic, lacking the emotion, narrative invention and visual brilliance that mark Ward's best films (including "The Navigator" and "Map of the Human Heart"). Having driven most of its Toronto industry screening audience into a deep slumber or early exit, "River" looks to be cast out to sea by most theatrical buyers.

Contrived and unreal.

The film lacks chemistry and conviction and, except as unconscious and grotesque comedy, never really works.

Vincent Ward’s troubled River Queen finally appears this week, but it already feels consigned to the distant past. As in a hallucinated history of New Zealand film, the nutty romanticism of The Piano blends into the land-wars western Utu, but viewed through a dense, nearly impenetrable thicket of post-production tinkering – rambling voice-over, bombastic choral score, sudden lurches into slo-mo and over-editing – that suggests nothing so much as pre-release panic and an emptied bag of tricks.

Filled with some striking imagery but which ultimately keeps viewer involvement at an unfathomable distance.

A piercing, contemporary analysis... Deeply thought and charged, it teaches and warns, as well as entertains...

No doubt director Vincent Ward had higher hopes for his period drama, a 19th century saga about a young Irish woman (Samantha Morton) caught in the crossfire between warring British colonials and indigenous Maori tribesmen. Fine cinematography and the occasional battle scene apart, alas, the result is a sluggish bore that's as hard to fathom as Kiefer Sutherland's bizarre Oirish accent.