River Queen

Review by Clint Morris

If people want to see picturesque scenery, they need only stick a couple of bucks in the telescopes adorning the top of the Anakie Alps.

As for witnessing Kiefer Sutherland hamming it up with an entertaining, but off, cockney accent? Book yourself a table at his local, come St. Patrick’s Day. 

Bottom line: There’s a much cheaper way to experience the only appealing – though Sutherland’s accent is likely to provoke my laughs, than praise – element of Vincent Ward’s new film, which, by and large, is no more than a pretty postcard veiled in film’s clothing.

Like a pair of ratty pants, you can’t still wear River Queen, but it’d much better if they/it were stitched together better. In the film’s case, not a lot seems to flow – we’re treated to pretty much just a series of slow, unconnected scenes – and the pacing is as leisurely as the entrants in a senior citizen’s potato-sack race. The film did have a pretty infamous set of problems during productions, mostly notably; the loss of its director – Ward, of The Navigator fame – who only returned once the film hit the editing machines. The lack of a constant captain, and the slow, uninteresting storyline, proves that nobody had much interest in doing anything other to the film than simply ‘finishing it’.

Set amongst an epic 19th century surrounding, Queen fixes on the adventures of a young Irish woman (Samantha Morton) and her family (Stephen Rea as her father), who find themselves on both sides of the turbulent wars between British and Maori during the British colonisation of New Zealand.

When her child – named, rather blandly, ‘Boy’ – who is half-Maori (mum had had a fling with a native, some years before, we’re told), is kidnapped by his biological grandfather (Wi Kuki Kaa) and his clan, she spends the next chapter of her life on a frenzied search to find him. Find him she does, but not till years later, and not till he’s well and truly under the spell of the men that took him. (How very Deep End of the Ocean, hey?)

Sutherland – pretty much only cast because they could use his name for marketing purposes – plays the small role of an officer who remains a life-long friend of the woman’s. Aside from getting to do his best ‘Blackbeard’, he hasn’t been giving much to do.

River Queen could have been as entertaining as its exquisite cinematography. Unfortunately, locale and film stock was put before story and pacing, and as a result, most eyelids’ will give way. 

2 out of 5

River Queen
Australian release: 6th July, 2006
Cast: Samantha Morton, Stephen Rea, Kiefer Sutherland, Cliff Curtis, Temuera Morrison, Rawiri Pene
Director: Vincent Ward
Website: Click here.