After 20 years Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, where he finds his wife held prisoner by suitors vying to be king and his son facing death at their hands. To win back his family and all he has lost, Odysseus must rediscover his strength.

‘The Return’ is an adaptation of the final sections of Homer’s Odyssey, one of the two epic poems written by the Ancient Greek poet. These sections tell the story of the mythical Greek King Odysseus, who returned to his home island Ithaca after twenty years of fighting abroad and being presumed dead in the Trojan War. In this movie, we follow both Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) as he returns unrecognisable and unable to reclaim his place on the throne, and his ‘widow’ Penelope (Juliette Binoche), who is now essentially a prisoner in her own palace and in a position where she is forced to choose a new husband. Both these paths will converge as ‘The Return’ progresses.

I’m not familiar with the material beyond a loose knowledge of Greek mythology and other movies that have tackled aspects of Homer’s poem, but I was expecting a little more to happen here than what does, perhaps a symptom of the focused nature of Uberto Pasolini’s narrative. It’s main selling points are the two leading performances, with Ralph Fiennes impressively ripped and taking over the screen as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche selling the angst of his wife very well – their first collaboration since ‘The English Patient’ 30 years ago. The issue as such is that the title is treated too literally and we wait so long for Odysseus to actually return that we end up with a rather rushed finale following on from a very slow opening 90 minutes. It also relies on a fair bit of suspension of disbelief, primarily on the improbable basis that no one recognised Odysseus when he returns, including his own wife, his own son, and many others who he knew well.

‘The Return’ is handsomely crafted with good production design and a terrific Ralph Fiennes performance, but overall the story failed to grip me with a curious lack of dramatic tension.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Uberto Pasolini

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Charlie Plummer, Tom Rhys Harries, Marwan Kenzari and Claudio Santamaria

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt19861162/