Unremarkable Film for a Remarkable Life

Rating: 6/10 (22 September 2017)

I enjoy the idea of bringing to life real-life adventurers/explorers. I understand there will be some artistic license in the story-telling (writing), cinematography, and editing. I read the book prior to seeing the movie. It was pure circumstance that the movie was out in a near-by theater just as I had finished the book. And as a final precursory note, I had started the book a while ago and don't remember all the details so I can't say to what degree it followed the general story of the book only that it did not seem to as much. Which, yes, tends to be the way of things. Though I think the book was very good, tough to put together so many pieces of research and story but still good.
Possible Spoilers Alert
It was a rather long movie (2:21) for having communicated so little to the audience. You had to "piece together" much of what was said, with what you saw (or think you saw) on the screen. There was much left to doubt. But so much that could have been communicated with perhaps a story teller/narrator. I mean tell us names of tribes, uniqueness of tribes, locations (more than were told), etc... Use the story-telling like in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" where he was journeying into the mountains in search of Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn). You know with the journal entry on screen, the music and the video.
I wasn't expecting an action-packed, archaeological thrill ride of Indiana Jones proportion but take lessons from "The Medicine Man", "The Emerald Forest" or other similar Amazonian films and tell us more what's going on. Tell us those are maggots eating his flesh, not just there is disease and such. I think Percy, Jack and Jack's close friend Raleigh were adventuring together but Raleigh was no where to be found. Sure a nice touching story of father and son but still.
And it would have been fine to end with the "Find a place for their spirits" if you have given use the desperation and hopelessness, the lack of closure that his wife, son (Brian) and daughter felt. Brian, in the book, went looking for his father, brother and Raleigh. You wouldn't have to spend more than 15 minutes on "Brian" (maybe at the end when Percy and Jack were "being killed???") but it could have given the audience the sense of mystery, desperation and emptiness that surrounded the lives of his mother and sister at not knowing for sure if Fawcett, or Jack, were dead or alive.
But I guess no one likes to learn from movies anymore, no one likes a truly great story. Or maybe the movie makers just didn't pull it off.
Lastly, movies that end with script on the screen are, in my opinion, are a lazy way to finish and often more of a let-down than in support of the story. Give us a "vision" of what Brian saw in his mind that was the lost city of "Z" instead of a paltry script on a movie screen. You know, have him standing there in a tribal village, and have the camera pan-out into a drone-view traveling along the ancient city like in the book, "I began to picture the flutists and dancers in one of the old plazas. I pictured them living in mound-shaped two-story houses, the houses not scattered but in endless rows, ... I pictured the dancers crossing moats and passing through tall palisade fences, moving from one village to the next along wide boulevards and bridges and causeways" (from the book) with some appropriate wording, maybe lines from Fawcett's journal, or some of the quotes his referenced from other authors. But the ending was very anti-climatic instead.
So much potential...such a remarkable explorer, considered one of the last great solo explorers, and yet such an unremarkable film.