High hopes but it left me cold

Rating: 2/10 (19 February 2017)

In brief, this movie to ENDURE, not ENJOY.
It is just WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. TOO. LONG. Three hours of relentless torture, persecution, despair, poverty, brutality, murder, betrayal, and then more of the same, was just too much, and Scorsese really should have made a 60 minute documentary rather than a movie. Yes, there are moments of lightness (two, we counted), and a brief sequence of hope and purposes where one of the padres felt like he was making a difference to the bleak poverty of the lives of Japanese villagers. Other than that, this movie is one inevitable, ghastly, slow slide to apostasy. On occasions, Mr Scorsese, I want my movies to give hope, humour, courage and good things, and your movie gave none of those.
I had high hopes for this: Neeson, Garfield and Scorsese made it an attractive proposition. However, an hour into the movie and I was ready to leave. The plot was muddy and laborious, and Scorsese insisted on showing us short imagistic fragments that led nowhere.
Two last gripes. Firstly, the idea that medieval rural Japanese villagers would be able to speak English (or Portuguese as the narrative language) is ridiculous. Secondly, why oh why did Scorsese make us sit through the credits before the house lights came on? A few more minutes of tedium? Whatever you wanted, it didn't work.
It gets 2/10 for the cinematography and nothing else.
Unless you are a fan of medieval Japanese torture and murder techniques, don't both watching this. Some movies stay with you for days, weeks, months, a lifetime. This one you will want to forget asap and move quickly to something more edifying.