The film opens with Luke Purdue, played by John Krasinski, pulling off what should be a slick art heist in Thailand. He's stealing some rare painting while being pursued by a mysterious woman named Esme, played by Eiza González, and her team of mercenaries. Right from this opening sequence, something felt off to me. Krasinski, who I've always enjoyed in his other roles, seems completely out of his element as this supposedly roguish, world traveling thief. His delivery of the one-liners felt forced, like he was doing a bad impression of someone cooler than he actually is.
The plot then shifts to London, where Luke reconnects with his estranged sister Charlotte, a museum curator played by Natalie Portman who's going through a divorce. Luke essentially drags her into this quest for the legendary Fountain of Youth, though we learn he's secretly being funded by Owen Carver, a terminally ill billionaire played by Domhnall Gleeson who desperately wants to achieve immortality. The siblings discover that their late father had been researching clues hidden within six historic paintings, all connected to something called the "Protectors of the Path" a secret society that supposedly guarded the fountain for centuries.
This is where the movie starts to completely lose me. The logic behind their treasure hunt becomes increasingly absurd as they hop from location to location. One of the key clues is apparently hidden in Rembrandt's "Head of Christ" which supposedly went down with the Lusitania. In what has to be one of the most ridiculous sequences I've seen, they somehow manage to raise the entire sunken ship and recover the painting from a miraculously preserved safe. I sat there watching this unfold, thinking about how the Lusitania is essentially a war grave, and these characters are treating it like their personal storage unit. The movie presents this as a fun heist sequence, but it struck me as poorly thought out.
From there, we're whisked through a series of international locations - Vienna, Cairo, and eventually the Great Pyramid of Giza. The characters discover that a musical cipher hidden in something called the Wicked Bible is crucial to finding the fountain. Charlotte's son Thomas somehow cracks this ancient code in like minutes, leading them to believe the fountain is hidden beneath the Great Pyramid. Using some kind of advanced scanning technology called muography, they locate a secret chamber.
The climax brings together all the film's various plot threads in increasingly nonsensical ways. Esme, who we learn has been working to protect the fountain rather than claim it, teams up with an Interpol inspector named Abbas to stop Carver from reaching his goal. Luke gets wounded in the confrontation, and Carver forces him to test the fountain's waters first. This is where the movie's central mythology completely falls apart for me. Luke realizes that the fountain has a terrible cost - if you drink from it while loving others, it drains the life from those you care about. But if you drink it with purely selfish intentions, you supposedly gain power. Except that when Carver, who is clearly the most selfish character in the film, actually drinks from the fountain, he's rapidly aged to death instead of gaining power. The rules that the movie spent two hours establishing, suddenly meant nothing.
Watching John Krasinski try to embody this adventurous, roguish character was genuinely uncomfortable for me. Every dialogue felt rehearsed, every action sequence looked like he was concentrating too hard on not looking awkward. I kept thinking he seemed more like he was playing dress-up than actually inhabiting the role. There were moments where I swear I could see him thinking about his next line rather than living in the moment as his character.
Natalie Portman fared even worse in my opinion. I've seen her give absolutely incredible performances in films like "Black Swan" and "Jackie" so I know she's capable of much better than what's on display here. She seemed disconnected from the material, delivering her lines with a flatness. The supposed chemistry between her and Krasinski as siblings was nonexistent - they felt like two actors who had just met on set and were reading dialogue at each other.
The one bright spot in the cast was Domhnall Gleeson as the villain Owen Carver. He seemed to understand that the material was somewhat ridiculous and played it with just the right amount of humor. His line delivery of "I'm getting pretty sick of you!" was one of the few moments that felt natural and earned a genuine chuckle from me. I found myself wishing the entire movie had been told from his character's perspective instead.
Eiza González as Esme was meant to be this stoic, mysterious guardian figure, but her performance came across as wooden rather than enigmatic. The fight scenes involving her character felt choreographed in the worst way - you could see her hitting her marks and waiting for her cues. Stanley Tucci shows up briefly as some kind of elder in the Protectors organization, but his scenes are so minimal that it felt like he shot all his material in a single afternoon for an easy paycheck.
The dialogue throughout the film was consistently problematic for me. So many lines felt artificial, like they were generated by ChatGPT.
What really frustrated me was how the film's central mythology kept contradicting itself. The movie establishes these rules about the fountain - that it punishes those who drink from it while loving others, but rewards pure selfishness. But then the most selfish character dies instantly upon drinking from it, while characters who clearly care about others seem to suffer no immediate consequences from being near it. I spent a significant time trying to understand the internal logic, only to realize that the filmmakers probably hadn't worked it out themselves.
The pacing felt off throughout. We'd spend ten minutes in one exotic location, then immediately jump to another without any sense of the journey or the passage of time. The characters seemed to solve ancient puzzles and decode centuries old ciphers with impossible ease. Charlotte's son cracks a musical cipher that's supposedly stumped scholars for generations, and he does it while casually sitting at a computer.
I will give credit where it's due - the film looks absolutely gorgeous. The locations are stunning, from the bustling markets of Bangkok to the grand architecture of Vienna to the imposing presence of the Great Pyramid. The cinematography makes excellent use of these real locations, and it's clear that significant money was spent on making everything look authentic and expensive. The production design is solid throughout, and the action sequences, while logically questionable, at least have some visual flair and momentum.
The Lusitania sequence, despite being completely absurd from a logical standpoint, was at least visually interesting and had some genuine tension. The pyramid infiltration scenes had moments of classic adventure movie excitement, even if they were undercut by the nonsensical plot developments surrounding them.
But ultimately, all the beautiful locations and expensive production couldn't save what felt like a fundamentally broken story. This movie had all the ingredients for a fun, crowd pleasing adventure - exotic locations, ancient mysteries, family dynamics, and a quest for something legendary. Instead, it felt like a soulless attempt to reverse engineer the success of better films without understanding what made those movies actually work.
I kept thinking about how films like "National Treasure" or Indiana Jones managed to make their outlandish premises feel believable through strong character work and internal consistency. Those movies understood that the treasure hunt is really just the framework for exploring interesting characters and their relationships. "Fountain of Youth" seems to think that moving the characters through exotic locations and having them find exposition about ancient mysteries is enough, but it never bothers to make us care about the people involved or believe in their world.
By the time the credits rolled, I felt like I had watched a very expensive rough draft of a movie rather than a finished film.
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