Review:

Noah (12A)

Dir: Darren Aronofsky

With: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connolly

Runtime: 138 minutes

WHY have Biblical movies become as rare as hens with full sets of gnashers? It could be the decline of organised religion in the west, or the rise of the superhero movie, the heroes of which are not messiahs, but enjoyably naughty boys. Perhaps audiences are too sophisticated, or they want to leave the fraught subject of faith at the cinema door and have some escapist fun.

Whatever the reason, Darren Aronofsky has chosen to fly in its face with Noah, the story of one man and his boat. One could never accuse the director of Pi, The Fountain, The Wrestler, and Black Swan of timidity, and diving into a near abandoned genre shows commendable bravado only matched by Ridley Scott, whose Biblical epic, Exodus, is out in December.

Yet as fearless as he has been in the past, Aronofsky has gambled small here with a picture that has its spectacular moments but which, ultimately, ends up more run of the mill than DeMille. His Noah is played as the first eco-aware tree hugger, an Al Gore of days of yore, and the film takes its temperature from him. Neither as enjoyably overblown as the Biblical epics of old, or sufficiently daring to break much in the way of new ground, the picture plays out in an impressive enough fashion without ever making one say "wow", which is surely in the job description of a Biblical epic. After all, it was Ben-Hur that won 11 Oscars, not Ben-Hmm.

As if recognising that a modern audience would not know their Ten Commandments from the Top Ten, Noah begins with a race through early history, from the Garden of Eden to Cain and Abel.

Eventually, we reach Noah and his family. With the world descended into wickedness, Noah, his wife (Jennifer Connolly) and their three sons are struggling valiantly to live a good life. "We only collect what we can use and what we need," the vegan Noah tells his son as he picks some juicy moss for tea. History does not relate much about the calorie content of moss, but judging from Noah's general robustness it was about the same as a sausage supper.

One night, Noah dreams of a great flood engulfing the earth. Unsure what to make of this, he travels to see his uncle, Methuselah, played by Anthony Hopkins (oh to have overheard that initial phone call from Hopkins' agent. "They want me to play WHO?"). Hopkins does not have much in the way of screen time, but he makes the most of it as the wise old man who has seen it all. White of hair and beard, he has the face for a Biblical epic, as does Connolly, with her well-scrubbed, sharply drawn features.

Just in case talk of great floods and ark building is not enough to keep a modern audience engaged, Aronofsky adds some "watchers" to his picture.

These function, as in the Bible, as angels, guarding the fortunes of Noah and his family. Giant, lumbering, human-shaped beings made up of rocks piled one atop the other, they look like escapees from a Transformers movie, complete with echo chamber voices. It is the one outbreak of epic daftness in the movie that otherwise begs the audience to take it seriously.

Noah and the Watchers begin the job of building the ark, and lo does it take a long time. By the end of it, Noah and Naameh's children, plus adopted daughter Ila (Emma Watson of Harry Potter), are all grown up. Eyeing Noah's preparations with interest is Tubal-Cain the warrior king, played by Ray Winstone. The star of Sexy Beast turns out to be another fine piece of casting, as is Watson, who shows that after a slow-ish start, she has the capacity to be one of the more impressive graduates from the Hogwarts school of acting.

Aronofsky does not make the audience wait too long for the rains to come, and before you can say average Scottish summer the ark is loaded and ready to go. In keeping with Aronofsky's principled, eco-friendly approach to filmmaking, the animals, duly arriving two by two, are strictly of the computer-generated kind. Hurrah for that. The rest of the special effects are reserved for the flood, and mighty impressive they are too.

Instead of piling on the spectacle, Aronofsky prefers instead to take us inside the brooding soul of Noah. Crowe has not been in such obvious turmoil since Gladiator (or the arrival of the reviews for Robin Hood). He is in his element when playing a man with the weight of the planet on his back, and it is hard to see any other actor who could fill Noah's shoes so well.

But as if unsure of where else to go, Aronofsky soon catapults the audience back into familiar action movie territory before wrapping the story up neatly. It is one of several occasions when one wishes he had been bolder.

Whatever else a modern filmmaker needs to make a Biblical epic, faith in oneself is surely at the top of the list.