TORONTO, Canada—The Return is full of big classical themes: devotion, guilt, responsibility, jealousy, atonement, and longing. What it delivers that’s unique, however, is the sight of an incredibly ripped Ralph Fiennes slaughtering villainous scoundrels with a blade and bow and arrow.

Once again proving that he’s one of cinema’s most versatile and adventurous actors, Fiennes assumes the role of Homer’s epic hero Odysseus in Uberto Pasolini’s retelling of the Odyssey, whose slow-burn pace adds tremendous heft to its drama and builds intense anticipation for its climax, in which its celebrated headliner erupts with a ferocity that’s breathtaking in its steeliness, its swiftness and—most affecting of all—its sadness.

Written by Pasolini, John Collee, and Edward Bond, The Return (premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival) isn’t hung up on fidelity; only focused on a particular section of its source material, its prime concern is capturing the profound weightiness of its characters’ dilemmas, choices and actions.

Many years after the fall of Troy, Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche) continues to wait for the return of her husband Odysseus, whose wartime triumph is now the stuff of legend. All is not well, though, on Penelope’s home island of Ithaca. Poverty and hunger run rampant, Odysseus’ son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) has been unable to assume the mantle of the father he never knew, and a collection of suitors have set up shop around the palace, determined to force Penelope........

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