Oro

In the intro to 'Oro', the writer says of the protagonists:

"they were harsh, arrogant, cruel, often divided by quarrels... They killed without scruples and died without protest, in search of gold..."

The rest of the movie is a long, plodding death march illustrating the above points in one brutal incident after another. I was attracted to 'Oro' because of the involvement of Arturo Pérez-Reverte, author of the 'Alatriste' novels, and Agustín Díaz Yanes, the director and screenwriter of the movie version with Viggo Mortensen. As it turn outs though, the cast of 'Oro' is basically a bunch of minor characters from the Alatriste novels while the only thing it has in common with the Mortensen movie is the stabby, throat-slitting viciousness of the fight scenes. The artistry and athleticism of the swordsmen in 'Captain Alatriste' is nowhere to be seen.

I gave 'Oro' a five on the IMDb scale. It's worth seeing if you're really into the period or the creative people involved; if not, you probably want to give it a pass.

I frankly don't understand the bad reviews concerning this action adventure film. This is for me a very good, gritty, taut movie, with plenty of action and riveting scenes, good characters depiction and symphony. This is not light hearted but rather gloomy, and desperate. You still can compare this one to Carlos Saura's ELDORADO and Werner Herzog's AGUIRRE; you can compare but that's all, the two latest movies are a bit - or even more - better than this one. Let's be fair. Anyway, this movie is worth watching, definitely, especially if you are fond of Spanish adventures in Amazonia forest in lust for gold. There were not so many of them.

Acting was decent and the story is not bad,but the script was absolutely horrible so is directing of this movie. It's very boring. Not sure what else to add to this. There isn't much going on other than lots of pointless walking. It starts in nowhere, leads nowhere and ends nowhere. Could've been a great piece with some action, some dialogs that connected you to any of the characters. As people die, you just don't care. There's just 1 drama during the movie and it had nothing to do with the movie, which was another pointless thing in the script. Just quite a bit lack of common sense and that lack of common sense haunted the whole movie during a lot of the scenes that made little sense.

It easily could've been a 6 or 7 with just some thought put into it.

Cartoonish, but in a bad sense. 90% of the time the conquistadors wander around in the jungle carrying tons of steel, guns, armour, and all sorts of weapons... I wonder if they eat at all, because they don't carry food, or pots to cook, or stuff to sleep or spare cloths... At least Aguirre had porters to do the heavy lifting. The dialog sounds (I am a native Spanish speaker) like the mockery of a bad 1950's movie... The characters act like robots, doing things without a motive (this is probably a problem with the original script). The jungle looks like Madrid's botanic gardens. In summary, the producers should have deleted the files before embarrassing themselves.

May be people who gave really low ratings wanted a typical Hollywood movie??

The movie keep me entertained all the time, the settings, environment, actors, costumes and story are all very high quality.

A really great realistic explorer & adventure movie, feels like you are there in the jungle with them.

9/10