By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Catherine McCormack | Elizabeth Hurley | Josh Lucas | Sarah Polley | Sean Penn
Country: france, united_states
Year: 2002
Running time: 113
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0210382
Michael says: “Completed in 2000, this schizophrenic film starring Sean Penn, Elizabeth Hurley, Sarah Polley and Catherine McCormack is finally being released this fall. Based on a best-selling Anita Shreve novel, and directed by action lenser Bigelow (NEAR DARK, POINT BREAK), WATER jumps between the present and a 1873 Smuttynose Island (off the coast of New Hampshire.) Photojournalist Jean (McCormack) travels by yacht with her Pulitzer-Prize winning poet husband (Penn), his brother (Josh Lucas) and his girlfriend (Hurley), to the island site of a double murder in 1873. As her research draws her in and away from the sexual tension of the present-day yacht antics, she begins to unravel a deeper mystery… that the man hung for the murder may have been innocent. Sarah Polley is magnificent as a Scandinavian immigrant with a disturbingly trouble past, and Katrin Cartlidge (BREAKING THE WAVES) is a hoot as her uptight sister. Breathtakingly shot off the coast of Nova Scotia, Bigelow does a good job with the historical story, but the present-day tale is awkward and doesn’t tie in very well. Basically a mixed bag.” 3 cats