Director: Roland Joffé
Stars: Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Ray McAnally, Ronald Pickup, Chuck Low
18th Century Spanish Jesuits try to defend a missionary from coming under the rule of pro-slavery Portugal.
Snoozefest! Damn this film was boring. I mean, that synopsis up there is pretty much what this film is about but that doesn’t even get introduced until about 45 minutes into the film (although the Cardinal was narrating from the beginning but he was just blathering on). Yeah it looks nice and the locations were beautiful but the heart of the story just didn’t do anything for me. It threatened to get good towards the end as there were some actions scenes but they never reached a blistering pace.
On a side note, Liam Neeson has hardly changed in 28 years.
But basically the missionaries went in and tried to spread the word of God, you know, because that’s such a noble cause, to go in and dominate someone else’s culture. Anyway, the missions are under threat of being part of a territorial dispute between the Spanish and the Portuguese, and the Cardinal is there to decide whether they should be protected from the negotiations or whether they are just part of the deal.
It’s obviously an ugly period of human history and the film shows the best and worst of religion (and humanity). But the problem is that it’s about the tribe suffering, yet all the focus is on the priests and the cardinal. I mean, at the end the cardinal has a laughably “poignant” speech about the nature of the world and it’s completely ridiculous because the impact of the film shouldn’t be upon. It’s supposed to be about the suffering of the tribe, not about the blot on the conscious of a cardinal who played at politics.
It seems to me that the tribe are merely a plot point for the other characters to quarrel over, and that’s just inexcusable in my opinion. And the other thing is that it’s just boring. Did not like this film at all. Avoid The Mission.
