Noah

Darren Aronofsky directs Russell Crowe as Noah in this adaptation of the biblical Noah story, having heard an interview with the director prior to watching this film, I knew it did not rigidly follow the biblical text, however it is not just a few minor details that are different, the screenplay/plot vary massively from the biblical story.

For the purposes of this review, I will attempt to put aside the fact that it is wildly inaccurate, and attempt to judge this purely as a piece of film making, and in that sense it is not a bad movie. It is perhaps a little to long, with 30 minutes to go I was looking at the time on my watch, which is an indication that I had lost interest at that point, the story plods along at quite a pedestrian pace at times, and I think this would benefit from losing 15 minutes here and there to bring it down to 2 hours or less.

I was also not sure about the use of the Watchers, Aronofsky has clearly seen this as a fantasy film, and as lost the sense of it's setting, and turned it into the bible meets Transformers.

On the plus side, Crowe does a decent job as Noah, and Emma Watson adds to my growing appreciation of her talent. despite the flaws with the plot, the film is very well shot, and the landscapes pre and post flood are beautiful.

As a piece of cinematography, this is a very good film, but it is hard to ignore it faults in terms of screenplay and storyline 6/10