Boring movie that misses the mark

Rating: 3/10 (27 August 2006)

I generally have great patience with movies, willing to watch most anything, yet I found myself fast-forwarding to the end of this one because I couldn't take any more random nature scenes.
The interaction between the Native peoples and the early Virginian colonists were in reality fascinating from a historical perspective, including their inability to trade because of poor communication. Yet this picture portrayed Native peoples with all of stereotypes of early relations, without a clear picture of the complexity of their society and their own motivations for dealing with the colonists. Instead we generally see them acting enamored of the colonist's technologies and making some kind of war whoops like this was an old cowboy movie.
The only good thing about this movie: its lead actor. The strength of the actor playing Pocahontas could have driven this movie, yet for some reason, she isn't given enough material to work with except for dancing in the grass with Colin Farrell. Her coming of age and Anglicization could have been very moving, yet this does not come until the end of the film and by then, I just wanted to return the movie.
While some may appreciate the way this film is shot, I found it extremely distracting, with random shots of the forest and water to be jarring and annoying. Had the director cut out such pretentious artwork, and focused on the relationships between the people in the movie (as well as given some like Christopher Plumer more opportunity to act) this piece might have been saved.