The Lost City of Z

I'm sad to say that I was disappointed by this film in almost every aspect. It seems to me that the biggest problem it has is the pacing. For a two and a half hour long film, pacing is important to keep the viewers engaged and this movie just gets it completely wrong. It feels like three movies clumsily stuffed into one, and as if that wasn't enough, it adds a bunch of utterly irrelevant scenes which could have easily been cut out of the movie entirely. I, for one, was expecting to see at least some beautiful cinematography, but the movie fails to deliver even in the aesthetic aspect. I was also expecting to see a lot more of the actual journey to the Amazon, but instead we got scene after boring scene in England, where nothing of importance really happens. After about an hour and a half I was left wondering how so many critics found this movie watchable, desperately trying not to fall asleep. To make matters even worse, Charlie Hunnam delivers an awful performance and makes for an overall uninteresting lead. Surprisingly, the only performance worth watching in this film was, out of all people, Robert Pattinson. I'm certainly glad he's moving away from his Twilight years and I hope to see him in more roles like this one in the future. Overall, this was a forgettable, boring, mess of a movie.

It's very rare in 2017 Hollywood that we get an epic like The Lost City of Z. Albeit noticeably flawed in many aspects, this film hearkens back to the days where exploration epics were a normalcy in the filmmaking world.

The strengths of The Lost City of Z lie with its unique journey the protagonist takes, and not necessarily with the protagonist or the film itself. What I mean by that is that I think the actual story the film is based on is more interesting than how the film portrays it. Sometimes biopics that span a great length of time are difficult to effectively portray on the big screen. Because 'Z' takes place over the course of roughly 20 years, it becomes increasingly tough to grapple onto something worth enjoying. Every time one of his explorations seems to get interesting, we get interrupted by his abrupt return to civilization and more family drama. Whether or not that's how the true story of Percy Fawcett went is irrelevant. Sometimes it takes some tweaking to make for an entertaining feature length film.

Charlie Hunnam plays Fawcett, an explorer who seeks glory in finding a mysterious city of people which has "never been touched by a white man". Fawcett himself is an interesting character, especially when the film dives into his own psychology and obsession over 'Z'. He's a lot like Matthew McConaughey's character from Interstellar, always searching for something nobody has seen before even if means leaving his family for years at a time. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Fawcett isn't very likable. We constantly see him leave his family even though, with the exception of war, he has a choice in the matter.

There is something to admire about someone, or in this case multiple people, who keep searching for the dreams no matter the cost. Fawcett, along with a few consistent compadres, go on dangerous expeditions through the jungle to find what they think is a real lost city. The aspects of the film I enjoy the most are watching men go through hardships in search of something they truly care about. In this regard, the film is a fascinating exploration physically and mentally.

Aside from Hunnam, there are a few great performances from Sienna Miller as Nina Fawcett, Robert Pattinson as Henry Costin, and Tom Holland as Jack Fawcett. All elevating each scene they are in and making the journey worth it for sure. There's a lot this film does well, including making a lasting impact on viewers minds in terms of exploration, but the writing can be a little bit more polished with certain changes made to fit a movie and not just serve the story properly. There's a happy medium there that I think could have benefited the final product.

+The Story

+Brings back a lost genre

-Uncharismatic characters

-Uneven script

6.7/10

That the movie succeeds is a credit to Hunnam, who comes of age both literally and figuratively in this movie with a performance of great humility, charm, and grit. A far cry from his breakout role as a motorcycle gang leader, and an even further cry from his awkward performance in Guy Ritchie's unique (and hopefully never-to-be-repeated) view of young King Arthur as a slum thug.

Props to audiences worldwide who are connecting with a 2 hour and 20 minute opus that is as far from the new Transformers attempt as the earth is from the moon. Shows that quality film-making will always find an audience.

Would have been nice if the script were historically accurate but perhaps that is asking too much.

Ironically, because of the internet, the amount of solid new archaeological evidence being released each 24 hours in today's world would be the equivalent of ten years of time in Fawcett's era. In particular, I am referring to the material of late which suggests lost civilizations submerged in both the Atlantic and the Pacific over 12,000 years ago (see Graham Hancock's lectures for more, most free on Youtube) would explain how Brazil, centered between the two, could indeed have hosted a "lost city" which, thousands of years ago, entertained guests from both realms.

Finally -- for hard-core history buffs only -- the written diagrams preserved even today in the Archives of Rio de Janeiro ("Folio #512") which constitute the last known "communication" from the ACTUAL final, ill-fated, Fawcett expedition were discredited because "experts" of the day claimed they contained elements of different language roots, not one root, and hence "must" be fake. However, if indeed the area was a centerpoint between two now-lost civilizations originating in two different oceans, the multiple language roots would be expected and natural, and not an indication of fraud. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

I enjoyed the movie - it was a bit paint by numbers but it covered a huge area of his life and his motivations, it was also a story of decline, the derring-do of the British empire and particular type of hero. I think that he has been overlooked because he 'failed' but the film shows how he respected the cultures he found, in contrast to the other members of RGS. The class-based snobbery of the period is also well represented. Highly watchable and recommended.

Screenplay jumps from one segment of Fawcett's life to another, without a lot of connexion.

I didn't really object to this film's two and a half hours long run time, I just wish more time would have been spent in the jungles, searching for the lost city, because when they're in the jungles, the film works well, as unseen natives launch arrows at them, and their rocky trip through some rapids, and the film is well worth watching for those scenes. More of the screenstory should have dealt with this, as well as the jungle natives themselves.

Instead, the first fifteen minutes are unrelated hunting stories, and it later veers off into feminist ramblings for one lengthy scene, and a completely out of place, and needless sequence on a WWI battlefield, which seems to occupy about fifteen minutes of the run time as well, and for what purpose? It seems like the filmmakers had abandoned the premise of searching for a lost city, and padded the plot out with these scenes, and as a result, the search for a lost city only makes up about 40% of the movie.

There are occasional questions of whether the explorers are more savage than the natives, but even that doesn't seem to go anywhere, as the film will quickly go off into a different direction.

This is (or should be, anyway) a film where its setting and location should become a character in its own right (like the jungles in Predator, or the building in Die Hard, or the hotel in The Shining) but we see so little of it that it could just simply be an overgrown section of land in Hawai'i.