Review of The Lost City of Z (2017) by Hotelcentral — 17 Jul 2018
I give "Lost City of Z" a 6 because, in the end, I would not recommend this film to anyone except a person I did not like very much. Not that it's bad; it just isn't very entertaining. Our intrepid explorer sets out to discover the source of a river in "Amazonia." Call me crazy but traveling upriver by raft seems like a lot more work than hacking a path through the underbrush. And how exactly do you get closer to the source of a river by traveling downstream, as happens in a couple of scenes? And virtually nothing is said about how one expects to survive in the jungle for years, except that, at one point, someone shoots a wild hog.
And then in the middle of it all, our intrepid explorer, an officer in the British army, goes off to fight in World War One. Well, you know, it's expected, or so one might say. But what in the world does it have to do with the actual Lost City of Z?
For all that passes by on the screen, very little that seems significant actually occurs. Our explorer makes not one but several trips into the jungle. He meets "indians". He records measurements with his surveying gear. He fights in the war. His wife sees him off bravely every time he departs and presents him with yet another child upon his return. And she's there of course to see him arguing with the membership of the Royal Geographic Society over the likelihood of some indigenous people building a great city of gold in the middle of the jungle.
Our explorer, you see, is the most open-minded fellow in the group. For some reason I do not normally think of British army officers from the late Victorian era when the words "open-minded" are uttered, or written, but perhaps I'm just biased.
The acting is fine. The visuals are nice. But ultimately I do not believe that the movie-makers knew very much about jungles or how to survive there or what exactly made this fabled lost city interesting enough to be worth everyone's time.
Worse still, the ending is a disappointment. Try this film if you dare but don't say you weren't warned.
This review of The Lost City of Z (2017) was written by Hotelcentral on 17 Jul 2018.
The Lost City of Z has generally received positive reviews.
Was this review helpful?
