Crowe Impressively Grounded as Enigmatic Noah
Russell Crowe’s performance in Noah alongside Jennifer Connelly in Darren Aronofsky’s “audacious adaptation of one of the Bible’s best-known but still enigmatic chapters,” is “impressively grounded” and “powerful,” according to Washington Post reviewer Ann Hornaday.
“Crowe play[s] Noah first as a humble, divinely inspired servant and, eventually, as a wild-eyed zealot, and Connelly brim[s] with earthy rectitude as his far more steady-eyed wife.
“The movie is clearly deeply respectful of its source material but also at times startlingly revisionist, a go-for-broke throwback to Hollywood biblical epics of yore that combines grandeur and grace, as well as a generous dollop of goofy overstatement.”
A.O. Scottmarch, New York Times critic, says Wellington-born Crowe, 49, plays Noah “with rabid gloominess”, while the Guardian concludes that Crowe “is just about the only actor who could have pulled off the mixture of muttering, furrowed-brow intensity and slice-and-dice combat (occasionally in concert with some rather preposterous CGI human-smashing giants made from rocks) that the role calls for.”
In 2000, Crowe won an Academy Award as Best Actor for Gladiator. He won the best actor award for A Beautiful Mind at the 2002 BAFTA award ceremony, as well as the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for the same performance.
Original article by Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post, March 27, 2014.
Photo by Niko Tavernise/Paramount Pictures.
