In the Footsteps of Marco Polo

It was a late night at work in a tiny Winter Northern Ontario town where I work as a Conductor/Engineer for a railway. I was settling into the local no-frills away from home Motel late last night in a rustic Paper Mill Town of Espanola which happens to have some remote and wild experiences as well as magical spiritual scenery but then again as I watched In the Footsteps of Marco Polo this all pales to compare. Perhaps because I was NOT prepared in the smallest fraction to the global experience that Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell had taken me on and LOL on a 27" bubble screen TV for that matter! It's only because wow, this wonderful spectacle just became an instant close friend.

Nay-sayers, nick pickers or authenticity critics need not apply! Please don't go there...do us all the favor and simply think 14 again (which assumes your thinking that the world is wide open and bullet proof) which I would not hesitate to imagine this duo unmistakeably will. Grab a snack/drink and go for the adventure that naturally unfolded to create this beautiful trip (but trip is hardly used correct). This is neither to me a trip nor a journey, it was a little over a year of next to being there with them on a mission to find out as much as what Marco Polo could have expected. PLUS PLUS PLUS OMG.

I can't thank these 2 guys enough for the moment that unfolded in this drab time in my life where it appears I am also middle aged and yet unchallenged with having only 3 weeks holidays a year at work (and that just happened this year), and to further strengthen life's death grip on my present grounding I am given my holidays at my companies discretion and never more than 1 week at a time. Long story short...Denis and Francis's heroic trip was my journey, my conquest, my lifetime this evening! AMAZING! All I did was hit the power button. Is that why these kind of movies or cinema epics become hidden gems...I think I just finally found out why!

Two best friends re-live their incredible 25,000 mile journey following Marco Polo's fabled routes through the east.

They had no crew, no support team, just two guys from Queens, New York City with a bunch of cameras and video equipment in their backpacks slogging alone through unbelievably difficult territory, risking their lives by crossing into hostile countries without visas, or entering strictly forbidden areas. Sometimes they would get stuck in a location for weeks before being able to find a way to go on.

But these are two tough, as well as endearing dudes. They seemed to manage to make friends wherever they went, but also to stare down Chinese army officers with nothing but a bluff.

It's interesting and effective to see these guys, now ten years older, reliving the journey in an interview setting, inter-cut with their video footage and still photographs of the journey. You get both the immediacy of the events, and the benefit of hindsight and memory.

Even though the film is only 90 minutes, it somehow doesn't feel rushed, although I could have happily watched hours more. In fact, my only complaint is that I wish it was longer so we could have seen even more details. Quite unique, and a lot of educational fun.