Noah

We all know the story - water, animals, big boat - but the recently released trailer of Russell Crowe-starrer Noah promises that this biblical adaptation will be a more action-packed, bloodthirsty depiction of an icon usually seen stroking doves and handing out olive branches. That's what's got its studio, Paramount, hot under the collar, but director Darren Aronofsky has wrestled final cut off his producers, and early reviews had called the final film, gratifyingly, wholly his vision.

Aronofsky and the Bible may seem an unlikely pair. His films have been drug-fuelled, sexual and extremely violent. Where he is groundbreaking is the visual direction of each project - always bold and always in service of the film's central idea.  The Wrestler  took us inside the ring with raw, focused energy. Black Swan  set up beautifully harmonized images, distorted then shattered them, and Requiem for a Dream laser-beamed the downward spiral of addiction into our minds with machine-gun editing. With Noah , Aronofsky promises the prototype disaster movie. We can expect ingenious camera trickery and astonishing special effects to thrill as much as impress.

Support is provided by veterans Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone, Aronofsky favorite Jennifer Connelly, and a host of hot young talent including Emma Watson and Douglas Booth, who recently starred in Julian Fellowes'  Romeo and Juliet. But we have inkling that, like Gladiator before it, this is every inch Crowe's movie. The tension of sensitivity and imposing physicality, so effective in films like A Beautiful Mind and L.A. Confidential have us in Russell's corner as the perfect action hero/prophet hybrid.

Ending 2014 is Crowe-collaborator Ridley Scott's Exodus, in which Christan Bale will play Moses. To add sea-salt to the wound, we hear both Bale and Michael Fassbender were reportedly offered the role of Noah. But one look at Crowe's hulking warrior means we can't imagine these actors bringing the same salt-of-the-earth presence to this operatic epic.