NOAH
Certificate 12, 138 mins, Action/Drama
Starring: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Douglas Booth, Logan Lerman, Leo McHugh Carroll, Ray Winstone, Sir Anthony Hopkins.

NOAH (Russell Crowe) lives with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll).

One night, Noah experiences a vision of a devastating flood.

A visit to the mountainous lair of Noah’s grandfather Methuselah (Sir Anthony Hopkins) confirms the dire prediction and Noah accepts his task to build an ark capable of temporarily housing one pair of “all that creeps, all that crawls, all that slithers”.

He is aided by the three boys, adopted daughter Ila (Emma Watson) and an army of rock-encrusted fallen angels.

Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), a bad apple from the other branch of the family tree, stumbles upon the ark and threatens to storm the vessel to escape the Creator’s wrath, instigating a fight to the death between the two men.

Noah is a fascinating yet flawed interpretation of six chapters of the book of Genesis.

Director Darren Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel expand this lesson into a sprawling narrative about one man’s tireless quest to save innocent animals from the apocalypse.

This Noah is both a parable about self-sacrifice and a bombastic spectacle replete with computer-generated battle scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth. Our Lord Of The Rings, if you will.

Crowe delivers a compelling central performance as a humble man, who accepts his own frailties.

Aronofsky punctuates the title character’s emotional rollercoaster with bombastic action sequences that are as soulless as they are spectacular.

When the pivotal deluge comes, it’s a tour-de-force of visual effects and swooping camerawork that is over in a matter of minutes.