Cristoforo Colombo: la scoperta

Christopher Columbus (Georges Corraface) is searching for support of his mission of exploration. He is certain of one sea connecting Europe to Marco Polo's discovery. The Portugese rejects him. King Ferdinand (Tom Selleck) and Queen Isabella (Rachel Ward) of Spain want to spread Christianity. Beatriz (Catherine Zeta-Jones) falls for Columbus. Inquisitor Father Tomas de Torquemada (Marlon Brando) interrogates him and his quest is rejected for countering religious doctrine. After getting royal acceptance, Columbus is able to convince doubting sailors and Martin Pinzon (Robert Davi) to support the voyage. Columbus faces sabotage, deprivation, brutality, and native revolt.

The story is fit for a historical drama. There are good bits and pieces but the overall is not that good. It looks inferior. This came out around the same time as "1492: Conquest of Paradise". Neither are terribly good movies but at least 1492 has the look of an epic. Tom Selleck has no business playing the Spanish king. He's basically Magnum, P.I. with a jewel bedazzled coat. It's laughable. By comparison, Marlon Brando is nowhere near as bad. Georges Corraface is functional but he isn't the biggest name. There are a couple of familiar faces like Zeta-Jones and Benicio Del Toro. There is limitation to the intensity. This is not quite good enough.

After hearing so many bad reviews for this movie, I knew I had to see it because I often find big budget disasters entertaining. Though that was no easy task, since the movie has never been released on DVD and has never popped up on any of the TV channels in my area (the last one probably because of the nudity in the movie.) I finally found it in a video store that still rents out VHS tapes. Well, is it as bad as you've heard? Yeah, it's pretty bad. The acting is pretty awful and the big names in the cast seem ill at ease throughout. The movie also has a poor sense of time, with periods that took a long time in real life condensed in what seems like a couple of weeks. And despite the fairly lavish budget, a lot of the movie looks surprisingly cheap and slapdash. (For example, a lot of the time when the ships are at sea, it's clear the boats are floating just a few feet from land.) As for the character of Christopher Columbus, you never get a feel of a real character, or feel what drives him or what he really feels. If you want to find out more about Columbus, I strongly suggest you go to your local library instead of sitting through this phoniness.

Now, to find a copy of 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE...

From the producer of 'Superman: The Movie' and 'Santa Claus: The Movie' comes what may well be the climax of a trilogy: the two-fisted tale of a lusty Genoese navigator who dared to sail the ocean blue to a New World, with a chorus, believe it or not, of Gloria in Excelsis Deo in the background. What more can be said? True guilty pleasures demand a willing suspension of good taste, and this tacky Hollywood whitewash may well stand as a classic of its kind. Screenwriter Mario Puzo tries to include as much history as he can, but the film is strictly a cartoon melodrama, complete with sword fights, romance, some pretty Atlantic Ocean sunsets and, in a casting nightmare unrivaled since Mel Gibson attempted Shakespeare, Tom Selleck and Rachel Ward playing King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The film was sponsored by Quinto Centenario Spain, the official Columbus 500th anniversary commemorative society, which helps explain the flattering matinée idol heroism. But, honestly, could anything else have been expected from the director of Iron Eagle II and the previous few James Bond adventures?

Really not much of anything: all the things that could have been interesting to work out (such as the enslavement of the natives) are not pursued, but rather avoided, and the cast isn't great either. Tom Selleck as the King of Spain is an exceptional example of miscasting. There is lack of depth and indeed lack of actual involvement with the subject. Too bad, now the movie is boring and pointless, really. Watch 1492 Conquest of Paradise instead.

I read recently "The songs that my mother taugh me" the auto-biography of Marlon Brando. When he remember this movie, he said that he made all that he could for re-write the script, and he tries even when the film was in his final editing, to do a script that told THE TRUE, about Cristopher Columbus, and the "discover" of the new world... The REAL history. He was very disappointed and in fact he predicted that the film at the end, will be shameful. This is what happens when Hollywood hears the producers in love with the money and not to a genius with 35 years of experience.