Exploring the Amazon with Percy Fawcett

Rating: 7/10 (25 April 2017)

The Lost City of Z is a mostly historically accurate docu-drama about the search for a lost tribe, one that may even predate Britain's modern man in the early 1900's. I say mostly because the film makes it seem like something was found, when in actuality the man at the center of this could have fallen into a hole and died for all we know.
That man is Percy Fawcett, who was a military man trying to regain his family's good name after his drunken father kinda sent it down the crapper. He wound up working for the geographic society in London and it's on a mapping mission for them that he found evidence of a whole society that may have or may still be living in the Amazon.
And really the whole movie is told through his viewpoint so you really gotta like Percy to want to get through this 2 hour and 20 minute movie because it is definitely a slow burn all the way to the end. I mean sometimes like watching Paint-dry slow.
But Charlie Hunnam, this is the dude's best performance as a movie star. His fans know him most as Jax Teller on Sons of Anarchy, but with Pacific Rim and Crimson Peakumm, not great. Here you see the rousing excitement Fawcett has at studying the unknown, but not so much you miss his remorse at having to leave his family for years at a time.
Fawcett is also a man fighting a battle on two fronts. He's looking for the tribe but he's also trying to convince those at home it actually exists, most of which portrayed as overwhelmingly British to the point they arrogantly shout everything. There's not a lot of comedy here but most of this made me laugh, including scenes with actor Angus MacFayden.
And this again proves Tom Holland is going to have a career long after Spider-Man ends. He plays Fawcett's older son and is by far Hunnam's best acting partner in this. Sienna Miller is good here but doesn't get much to do besides be the supportive wife, while Robert Pattinson..he's trying to make amends, not Kristen Stewart just yet.
This movie was directed by James Gray and some of the shots he puts together here really are incredibly suspenseful, like arrows shooting out from the jungle or an epic looking World War 1 creation. Most of the time we're in the jungle with these guys, you feel the heat, you get a sense there's danger behind those jungle trees.
So overall this is really a slowly paced movie but it's fantastically acted and you always want to see where this all goes. Not something I would run out for but definitely worth a recommendation and a watch, so I go 7 out of 10 guys.