Outstanding acting, mellifluous music, wonderful scenery and sets, but a plot that moves at a snail's pace

Rating: 4/10 (29 April 2007)

Wonderful photography, Horner's music is outstanding, and great acting. But this Hollywood fetish of saying "Based on a true story," should stop. The New World film has too many distortions of history. John Smith met Pocahontos when she was only 11 years old. Though John Smith was a soldier of fortune, I do not believe he would rob the cradle. Also, it is to his credit, in actual history, that he tried to keep the Jamestown colony going before his unfortunate accident (gunpowder burns). To his discredit, he embellished a lot of his writing with wild claims of doing this or that. Pocahontos married an Indian warrior named Kokoom who disappeared after about two years of matrimony. And even though Pocahontos was converted to Christianity, John Rolfe. her second husband, was still concerned about marrying a "heathen." Nevertheless, this marriage brought time for the Jamestown colony; that is, the Indians didn't attack until it was too late to do anything about getting rid of the English colonists. When history is so distorted, the film should say "This motion picture is a fictionalized account on what happened at Jamestown in 1607." The pace of the film borders on being tedious. It is tedious! And Thomas Rolfe, the son, is born in 1615. Pocahontos dies in 1617. Therefore, the son is only two years old when his mother dies. The motion picture son is a lot older. The sets made for this motion picture are outstanding. No doubt, a lot of hard work went into making them. For that matter, the cast, the director, the composer, et cetera put their all into making this bit of cinema, but the final product left much to be desired.