This is the first review I have ever contributed to IMDb which I use on a regular basis to inform my viewing choices but I feel compelled to write it as the high ratings are so unjustified I feel I have a duty to share my experience and balance the 7.4 (!!!!) score. I went into this with high expectations... every ingredient was present to potentially make this my new favourite movie, unfortunately the script and narrative (if they originally had one at all) failed to deliver.
My main problem was the narrative. The story takes place over a few decades and follows the efforts of Fawcett to discover the "Lost City of Z". He embarks on 3 "perilous" expeditions going up the Amazon but no sense of danger or suffering is at any point conveyed by the narrative.
The 3 trips are each expedited under 20 minutes of screen time. We have absolutely no idea of the time involved (apparently the expeditions lasted a few years each) nor any feeling towards the hardships the crew faces. To make matters worse, new crew members keep appearing out of nowhere and at some point even a horse!! which was nowhere to be seen on the raft in previous scenes. If this was not enough.... the raft keeps going downstream when they are supposed to go UPSTREAM, towards the source of the river.... oh well, I could have lived with these inconsistencies if I had a character to root for. Unfortunately we never feel any sympathy towards any of the protagonists. The character development is non existent and not helped by the fact the acting is very stiff at the best of time and downright awful for most of the movie. I didn't find Charlie Hunnam convincing as a Hell's Angel in SOA but he is seriously laughable as an English Army officer. This absence of feeling and empathy is also to be experienced towards the wife and children he leaves behind, every time he embarks on one of those trips. We simply do not care for them.
I obviously did not go into it expecting a new Fitzcarraldo or Apocalypse Now but for a movie which should have dealt with a man's obsessive doomed quest for a Lost City, the jungle and/or the river should have been part and parcel of the movie, a character in itself, an omnipresent entity. No such thing. The whole movie could have been shot in a winter garden for all I saw... You never have the feeling you are in the mud with the protagonists. The only feeling you experience is one of utter detachment and an urge for the movie to finish as soon as possible.
Extremely disappointed. Do not believe the hype!
My main problem was the narrative. The story takes place over a few decades and follows the efforts of Fawcett to discover the "Lost City of Z". He embarks on 3 "perilous" expeditions going up the Amazon but no sense of danger or suffering is at any point conveyed by the narrative.
The 3 trips are each expedited under 20 minutes of screen time. We have absolutely no idea of the time involved (apparently the expeditions lasted a few years each) nor any feeling towards the hardships the crew faces. To make matters worse, new crew members keep appearing out of nowhere and at some point even a horse!! which was nowhere to be seen on the raft in previous scenes. If this was not enough.... the raft keeps going downstream when they are supposed to go UPSTREAM, towards the source of the river.... oh well, I could have lived with these inconsistencies if I had a character to root for. Unfortunately we never feel any sympathy towards any of the protagonists. The character development is non existent and not helped by the fact the acting is very stiff at the best of time and downright awful for most of the movie. I didn't find Charlie Hunnam convincing as a Hell's Angel in SOA but he is seriously laughable as an English Army officer. This absence of feeling and empathy is also to be experienced towards the wife and children he leaves behind, every time he embarks on one of those trips. We simply do not care for them.
I obviously did not go into it expecting a new Fitzcarraldo or Apocalypse Now but for a movie which should have dealt with a man's obsessive doomed quest for a Lost City, the jungle and/or the river should have been part and parcel of the movie, a character in itself, an omnipresent entity. No such thing. The whole movie could have been shot in a winter garden for all I saw... You never have the feeling you are in the mud with the protagonists. The only feeling you experience is one of utter detachment and an urge for the movie to finish as soon as possible.
Extremely disappointed. Do not believe the hype!