Two estranged siblings join forces to seek the legendary Fountain of Youth. Using historical clues, they embark on an epic quest filled with adventure. If successful, the mythical fountain could grant them immortality.
Chuck says:
A sense of familiarity runs throughout Guy Ritchie’s “The Fountain of Youth,” a film cut from the same cloth as the Indiana Jones Adventures. However, instead of one intrepid archeologist, our heroes are a bickering brother-and-sister team that approach the preservation of antiquities from decidedly different perspectives. Flexing its $180 million budget at every turn, the movie utilizes its various international locations to good effect, giving the film a true sense of grandeur, which helps when sitting through its predictable story.
Luke Purdue (John Krasinski) fashions himself as a kind of Robin Hood where retrieving priceless paintings and other rare artifacts are concerned. However, he’s not immune to taking a big payday when it’s available. That’s the case at present as he’s in the employ of billionaire Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson), a man with deep, deep pockets but little time. Seems he’s dying and is desperate to find the fountain of youth.
Though many, including Purdue’s museum-curator sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman), would discount this object as nothing but a fanciful myth, a new theory suggests otherwise. Seems clues have been left on the backs of six famous paintings that will supposedly reveal its location. The problem is, these art works are scattered about the globe, requiring a great deal of travel and danger. One of them is lying at the bottom of the ocean amidst the wreckage of the Lusitania. Still another is hanging the museum where Charlotte works.
Bad enough the Purdues and their cohorts Murphy (Laz Alonso) and Deb (Carmen Ejogo) have to travel from one country to another with Carver to track these down, but they have company as well. After Luke steals a painting from Charlotte’s workplace, resulting in her termination, Interpol agent Jamal Abbas (Arian Moayed) is on their tail. Also dogging their steps is Esme (Eiza Gonzalez), leader of a well-armed holy order known as The Protectors whose job is to keep the location of the fountain a secret.
Before all is done, good guys reveal themselves to be bad guys, bad guys turn out to friends and numerous action set pieces are executed, none of them overstaying their welcome and a couple being actually quite clever. Ritchie is a pro at this sort of thing, keeping the film moving but never allowing it to become frantic, staging the requisite car chases and fist fights with imagination. “Fountain” may be familiar, but to its credit it never belabors the obvious, the director doing his best to find a fresh morsal among the stale narrative crumbs he’s saddled with.
Portman and Krasinski are very good as the contentious siblings, their rapport genuine, their timing sharp. Equally good is Benjamin Chivers as Charlotte’s son Thomas, who gets dragged along on the adventure, his sincerity going a long way towards convincing us his character is a genius. Gonzalez and Gleeson hit their marks and know their lines, while Stanley Tucci stops by for one scene as The Elder, the head of the Protectors. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knocked this out between set-ups during “Conclave.”
The cast’s conviction goes a long way towards keeping us involved while the film’s climax manages to pose some interesting moral questions. Seems a dire price is exacted from anyone drinking from the titular spring. The decision whether to imbibe or not is a revelation of one’s character, a situation that proves interesting, as well as similar to the ending in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” This is appropriate as “Fountain” is unable to separate itself from similarly themed movies, yet it manages to be a serviceable enough entertainment despite that.
3 Stars
