'The Return' A Review

The Return is a historical drama an adaptation of the final part of Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus(Ralph Finnes) washes up on the shores of his homeland to discover it in ruins and his wife Penelope(Juliette Binoche) beset by leering, reprobate suitors and his ineffectual son Telemachus(Charlie Plummer) under threat.

Finnes and Binoche are consummate talents and make something mildly diverting out of this mostly boring, misguided, pedantic script. Plummer is borderline unwatchable and seems wildly uncomfortable, whether a result of the period setting or the clunky script, who's to say, regardless he's bad. The rest of the supporting cast don't make much of an impression and they're given no assistance by the script or direction.

The locations are beautiful and appropriate, the costuming period, but the real issue is the adaptation of the source material. In the first, the end of Odysseus's journey simply doesn't have the same impact having not experienced it, the movie, kind of from conception, is destined to come up short. In the second, the Odyssey is an epic with magic and gods and monsters and adventure and here there is a baffling attempt to make it realistic. Like, director Uberto Pasolini seems to be focused on genuinely investigating Odysseus's PTSD, which I guess fair, but the execution just clearly misses the point entirely. None of the grandness of Odysseus's experience is conveyed, there's no sense of its depth or texture, no sense of its otherworldlyness. Which may be unfair, criticizing it for what its not so taking it on its own merits as a grounded ancient Greek period piece about the cost of war it just never really comes together, never delivers fully on action or emotion.

Two of our greatest actors make something watchable out of something that otherwise wouldn't be.

Currently available to rent on most VOD platforms.

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