Thrilling but uneven, ‘The Odyssey’ is a homecoming for Christopher Nolan

Matt Damon is Odysseus in The Odyssey. Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

Both admirers and detractors of the writer-director Christopher Nolan have noted his long-standing obsession with dead wives. In movies like Memento, The Prestige and Inception, the male protagonists are driven toward reckless, delusional and even vengeful acts by the memories of their late spouses.

One of the refreshing novelties of Nolan’s new film, The Odyssey, is that the wife