The Lost City of Z was a movie with all the makings of a film I should love. I love a good adventure movie, and the idea of floating down a wooden raft in the Amazon River sounds like something I’d enjoy. I’m a big fan of John Grisham novels. Still, most law thrillers (except ones like A Time to Kill or The Firm, adapted into films) often tend to blend except for The Testament, a novel that was equal parts a big city courtroom as an Amazon Jungle adventure. I find something about the Amazon intriguing, almost like I can’t get enough of it, especially when it’s displayed onscreen as a true adventure story. This is precisely what James Gray’s (Two Lovers, The Yards) is.

Despite not knowing anything else about this movie, I was intrigued by this one-sentence plotline and the fact that it had an 87% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of its release. Unfortunately, this movie did not live up to my lofty expectations. At 140 minutes, it was often too slow and meandering. But simultaneously, it was not long enough to tell the entire story. There was too much to say and cuts between the various events. This movie had so many moving parts that it needed to be longer. Yet, simultaneously, the movie felt way too long to begin with. It was one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenarios. I don’t know if it ultimately failed. But it certainly did not succeed.

There were two movies recently released that I wanted to see. The first was The Lost City of Z, with an 87% fresh critic score on Rotten Tomatoes but just 65% with audiences. The second was The Promise, which earned just 45% from critics and 95% from audiences. The trailer for The Lost City of Z was more interesting. I am starting to believe that I picked the wrong movie. The 95% audience score for The Promise intrigues me, though, and while this will be a film, I will see it in the theater, neither here nor there. The Lost City of Z is a movie that would be lost from my mind if I weren’t writing this review, even though I just saw it a couple of days ago.

The premise is sound. Charlie Hunnam (King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, F/X’s Sons of Anarchy) stars as Percy Fawcett, a British Army officer and surveyor who, in the early 1900s, leads an expedition through the Amazonian Jungle to discover the border between Brazil and Bolivia. The mission, ordered by the Royal Geographical Society, is vital because mapping the vague border between the two countries can potentially avoid a war. At the same time, British economic interests remain undisturbed.

Fawcett, a skilled anthropologist and Colonel in the British Artillery is initially not particularly fond of this assignment, mainly because his wife Nina (Sienna Miller – American Sniper, Foxcatcher) is pregnant with the young couple’s second child. But Percy knows he doesn’t have a choice and, because of his inquisitive nature, learns quickly to embrace the challenge, even though he knows it’ll be a couple of years before he returns. He brings some men, including Corporal Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson – Twilight, Water for Elephants), a more experienced explorer and Fawcett’s best friend. The monarch down in South America offers them a crew of indigenous people, supplies, and a raft.

You feel a sense of adventure when the group begins its voyage down unexplored territory. I was on the edge of my seat. But, unfortunately, it just went downhill from there. His journey quickly becomes one less about surveying and one about history as Fawcett discovers artifacts that suggest a previously unknown, advanced civilization may have once inhabited the region. Fawcett becomes obsessed with proving this and finding this lost city of Z, so much so that it consumes him. Despite the dangers, he repeatedly returns to the scene to prove to those in Europe that this ancient life existed. But like many of our greatest explorers, his compulsions lead to his ultimate demise.

Hunnam isn’t great here, but he’s believable. He certainly doesn’t overdo his role and gets the job done. But it never felt like Hunnam portrayed the obsession and desperation we were supposed to believe. He reminded me of a less secure Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It. He has the same good looks and the same charm. But this movie wasn’t character-driven. Instead, it revolved around a story, allowing us to appreciate what a rafting trip down the Amazon River in the early 1900s might have felt like.

The movie’s cinematography was the best part, but some will argue it was the pacing of the storytelling. I found the pacing to be incredibly painful at times. As mentioned, we get multiple trips to the Amazon. We get multiple trips home. And there is also a sprinkle of World War I, which I didn’t think was necessary for the story. This movie was long. And at the same time, some of the scenes felt rushed. The camera work was beautiful. For example, at one point, everyone on the raft was getting sick and dying, and one of the indigenous people was asked by Percy how much longer there was to go, to which he replied, “Many weeks.” So, I was very excited about the potential hardship that the group would incur over this period. But then, in the next scene, they have all arrived at their destination unscathed. You wanted more. You wanted much, much more. It was almost like Ang Lee and Terrence Malik got together and teased with a “What could have been.”

Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 7/10
Character Chemistry 7/10
Acting 7/10
Screenplay 7.5/10
Directing 6.5/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 6.5/10
Universal Relevance 7.5/10
75.5%

C-

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• Jungle
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• Into the Wild
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• The Water Diviner