Boring

Rating: 2/10 (15 January 2003)

This movie isn't nearly as good as many people claim it is. I think it's one of those emperor's clothes type effects. The plot isn't too bad or anything, and the acting is pretty solid.(What little there is....)But aside from that this movie has nothing going for it at all. There are massive amounts of time when nothing, nothing at all, is happening. You'll just just hear bad music(The soundtrack is horrible and it will stick in your head for days)and see random shots of the jungle. Maybe a few natives here and there building something, cooking something, walking through said jungle. It just goes on like that. I have seen this movie three times and each time it was a harder struggle to stay awake.
Then (SPOILER) at the end, there is this small battle in which Mendoza,(Smart Priest) fights the Portugese army to save the mission. At the same time, the other guy, who I will dub Stupid Priest, decides to sing and walk peacefully toward the army of portugese who are shooting at him. The stupidity of this absolutely blew me away. Who sings when large groups of soldiers are trying to kill them? No one does. They run away. If they have guts they fight, but no one sings. Is this man that stupid? Apparently it was an attempt at a "violence is never the answer" type message. That's fine. There are plenty of movies that pulled that off very well.(American History X, for example)But this is just stupid. It really defeats itself too. Those Portugese were pretty violent and it looks like they definitely came out ahead when it was all said and done.