Crowe should be commended for giving the film a grand, near epic look and feel despite having a less than epic budget.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 21, 2022

Crowe's film isn't gaudy war glorification towards a happy ending. This film is the acknowledgement of shared experience and shared loss between strangers that is tremendously noble, even with the sometimes over-dramatized story.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 8, 2022

A sweeping historical drama about one man; a personal story set against a huge backdrop that studies a father's sorrow and a nation's tribulations.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 3, 2021

While Crowe the actor has impressive screen presence and conveys grief with subtlety, Crowe the director errs on the side of caution in this conservatively directed feature, which splutters along...

| Aug 14, 2019

Successfully navigating war, drama, action and romance, this film has it all on both sides of the camera.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 14, 2019

The film's got issues, but it's a sincere, mournful celebration of a country that turned the pain of loss into strength.

| Original Score: 6.5/10 | Mar 14, 2019

Trying to do too much, and losing the humanity in his story, The Water Diviner is just a mess.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Aug 30, 2018

As a debut it is a remarkable effort, with Crowe showing a great deal of sophistication in handling the narrative.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2018

"The Water Diviner" is a beautiful story engaging the viewer on many different levels.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 21, 2018

Once again the character representative of Christianity shows only selfish, shallow callousness while the character representative of Islam offers a well-spring of peace, rest, and reoriented perspective for the weary Western protagonist's soul.

| Mar 16, 2018

Thinking that a movie directed by Russell Crowe is good may be the film reviewer's equivalent of crying: "Look at the dog! It walks!" But everything fits together, and it's well shot and satisfyingly pacy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 15, 2018

There are some good scenes in Crowe's directorial debut, but it mostly feels like a fumbled opportunity to make a much more significant film.

| Jan 12, 2018

There's no such elegance in The Water Diviner. Crowe's performance is great but he's basically a bull in a china shop, rampaging gracelessly through the emotionally reductive landscape of his film.

| Oct 16, 2017

The film is filled with exotic locales, brilliant supporting actors and lots of drama and emotion. Well done, Crowe.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 20, 2017

It's the cinematic equivalent of switching between 40 open tabs on your computer for two hours.

| Aug 22, 2017

There are fine things everywhere you look in this Australian historical drama. Yet, when it's over, you're still thirsty for a better movie.

| Jun 27, 2017

This is a movie lacking in life or vibrancy, or any real emotions for us to actually connect to or relate to the characters; it is enamoured by its subject matter and as such tries to make itself too respectful.

| May 11, 2017

The preposterousness of [the story] is offset by Crowe's powerful depiction of the horrors of war for both the Australians and Turks.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 2, 2016

[This is] for the tiresome cynics who think that many films aren't about anything anymore, and would rather a film be definitively about something, than any good overall.

| Original Score: C- | Feb 24, 2016

Crowe perfectly plays a dad going in search of the three sons believed to have been killed in action at Gallipoli in the First World War.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2015