Someone managed to make the exploration of the Amazon incredibly dull.

Rating: 2/10 (29 March 2017)

*****Spoiler Alert**** I was really looking forward to this film, as how can the exploration of the Amazon be anything other than amazing? Well I was wrong, this was utterly boring, excruciatingly dull and just plain awful. I can only give it a 1 out of 5 rating. After the first 30 minutes I was looking at my watch and wondering if I should bother, as I had more important things to do, like clean the oven. How can anyone make the exploration of the Amazon so tedious? This could have been like real life Indiana Jones! There was absolutely no sense of danger at any point, just flat as a very thin pancake. The film should really be re-named The Lost City of Zzzzzzz.
It was a truly odd film, this bloke gets asked to go Bolivia for the Royal Society to do some maps and stuff, doesn't want to go, But they offer him a shiny medal so he goes (leaving his wife and new born son), has a rubbish time, comes back to London, goes back to the Amazon (leaving wife, and second son), comes back to London, Goes to France for WW1, comes back to London and then goes to Amazonia again... For Heaven's sake man - just choose one! I shouted through gritted teeth.
It's terribly directed and the cinematography is really bad (and I say this as a trained cinematographer). It's so dark that I actually wondered if the bulb in the projector was bust, but then it would cut to a scene outside in a garden and it would (almost) be correctly exposed. Some interiors were so badly lit I actually couldn't see who was speaking, and a huge number of shots were so out of focus I again wondered if we were watching a dud print.
There was a really important (cough) scene with two blokes on a train having a chat about something. Now one bloke has a beard and one has a moustache, so that helps tell them apart in the dark, but for some reason we are looking at them over their shoulders and not 'at' them, and Mr Moustache-bloke turns away from camera (probably trying this 'acting' thing) and I can no longer see his face just his ear. Now it's so dark I can't tell if he has a nice ear, if it's too big or too small or if it sticks out, and By God this must be damn boring if I'm wondering about the relative angles of ear projection rather than what the hell is going on.
The framing is really odd, and the eye lines are all over the place, so I don't know who is speaking to who, and often the camera operator decided to be above or below eye-lines, making my head ache as it was so badly composed.
The first three scenes of the film could all be cut, or would serve better as flash backs, as they just don't go anywhere at all. OK a bit of back story, but we know the Major wants a medal with a single line of dialogue, not three flipping scenes as dull as a rainy Sunday.
The main character Major Blokey-pants was utterly dull and his motivation was all rather thrust down out throats, and I didn't care for him. Only after 90 minutes or so did his wife start talking about some bloke names Percy and I thought "Who is Percy?" and I realised it was the main character, who had been referred to as Major something or other (I forget) for the entire rest of the movie.
Couple of massive plot holes: they were in the middle of nowhere running low on food on a raft made of branches saying how no white man had ever been here before and clearly in the background is a bloke on a horse in a field. I kept thinking they would pan around and explain but they never did. I also wondered if they were travelling to seek the source of the river, how they were just floating along and not constantly rowing, as a river flows away from the source to the ocean.
They have been travelling down river for a year apparently and it all goes wrong and they decide to send this bloke back on a horse. Where did this horse come from?
And they are in the middle of the river all weak and dying and the other bloke (Beard-o) says to the main bloke "and here's a letter from you wife." FTAF??? Where had he been keeping that then?
When we finally get to the WW1 scenes the dead bodies in the trenches are clearly shop window dummies and for a film that is this expensive that is just rubbish. These scenes add absolutely nothing to the film, we could just have had a Voice over which went "After the first world war, where I saw active service in France and that bloke I knew who was on the trip to Bolivia with me, you know, thingie, was killed, I returned to London..."
Eventually we get back to Amazonia for the third time and Major Blokey-pants has bought his son with him this time Blokey-Pants minor, and they bang on about finding this lost city of Zzzz but never does he put forward a reason why he thinks there might be a lost city or indeed, why he is so keen to find it, he just wants to find it. Who were these people? Why did their civilisation die out? what was their favourite past time? Did they like cheese? None of these questions were answered or indeed even asked.
Compare this film to the savage Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972 Herzog) the bonkers Fitzcaraldo (1982 Herzog) or even the rather depressing The Mission (1986 Joffe) and you will be sorely disappointed.