River Queen: Rating: 2.5 stars

In 1860s New Zealand, an Irishwoman searches for her kidnapped half-Maori son, and is caught up in the British-Maori struggle for power. Anachronisms ensue.

River Queen (2005)
2005 · R · Drama
Reviewed 20 March 2009

This movie is proof that I will sit through anything for Kiefer Sutherland’s sake. It is also proof that sitting through said anything sometimes pays off, because there was a brief shot towards the end of Kiefer Sutherland’s naked backside, which totally made up for the dullness of the other buttless minutes.

River Queen is a movie I wanted to like, but couldn’t. I wanted to like it because it is beautifully shot — everyone and everything in this movie looks glowing and vibrant, thanks to the beauty of the New Zealand setting — and also because it is a rather unusual setting for a romance/drama/action story. Sadly, the setting was the only thing new in this very old, very predictable story: devoted mother seeks lost child, finding love along the way. Actually, maybe I’m wrong here — I’m trying to think of another example of this “very old” plotline, and, aside from Changeling, I can’t come up with any titles; maybe it’s not as overdone as I thought. Which makes it even more depressing that I could predict every twist half an hour before it happened.

The first thing to get old is the voiceover. I dislike voiceovers anyway — if it’s not clear what’s happening onscreen, the filmmakers are doing it wrong — but this one consists mostly of rhetorical questions and ominous comments that hint at future doom, which does not help me when I’m trying to pretend I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen later on in the film. Then there’s Kiefer Sutherland’s stage-Oirish accent, which is actually more hilarious than annoying but which sadly does not get the screen time it deserves, since they needed to make room on the audio track for more of Sarah’s rhetorical questions. One of the reasons I wanted to see this was because it’s the first time I can recall Sutherland taking on any foreign accent, and I’ll tell you now that he’s wise to avoid those roles. Fortunately, there is that above-mentioned ass scene, not to mention a scene involving old-timey bullet removal that would make even Jack Bauer cringe. Bare ass + bullets + screaming Kiefer Sutherland = okay by me.

When I wasn’t being bombarded with Sarah’s ponderous mental queries (“‘Why was I helping him?’ You just answered that not two minutes ago!”), I was being bombarded with bad singing and anachronisms, occasionally at the same damn time. For the record, I am a little biased here, because Danny Boy is a song I absolutely loathe. I hate it because not only does it give me a sugar headache, it’s often held up as a shining example of an olde, anonymous Irish folk song, when in fact it was written in 1910 by an upper-class Englishman. So when I hear it sung in 1860s New Zealand — and translated into Maori, no less — it kind of takes me out of the period mood. Perhaps even worse is the fine dress Sarah dons at one point late in the film, which — though beautiful — is very obviously a couple of decades ahead of its time in cut. That one really hurts.

Other than that, the film is passable. It bored me because I could see exactly how it would end; it bored my husband, who tells me he couldn’t see every twist but had long since passed the point of caring when the twists arrived. It’s your typical indifferently-done romantic melodrama, dressed up in period (and occasionally anachronistic) clothes, sprinkled with distractingly-bad accents, wrapped in a soundtrack that swells with strings. If that’s your thing, more power to you. Me, I’m getting Shoot ’em Up next.