Friday 23 January 2015

End of the Spear: Movie Review


Based on actual events, this movie tells the story of the murder of 5 missionaries in the Ecuadorian jungle in 1956 and what happens afterwards.
Honestly, I just sat through all 111 minutes of this movie. It ranks right up there with One Million Years BC, The Adding Machine and Marooned as stupidest movies of all time, movies that you watch to the end waiting for them to actually get interesting. It never happens. I think this movie really missed the whole point. It was a bunch of disjointed scenes, some of which were entirely in native dialogue. I do not speak Waodani, so had to just assume what was going on. It wasn't until I'd watched the whole thing that I decided to turn on the English subtitles and see if it actually translated the dialogue. It did, for the most part. Seriously, I would have thought that if it were necessary to turn on the subtitles to understand the majority of the dialogue in the movie, it would have either been automatic or somehow indicated that during the opening credits. However, even English subtitles couldn't redeem this movie. It really went nowhere. The characters were flat and boring. Such a story of tragedy and triumph should have moved me, but I was only "moved" to turn it off and do something more worthwhile. I also feel that the use of "intense sequences of violence" was deplorable (I fast forwarded those scenes) and they really would have been unnecessary to the plot, if there was one.
I would think that the missionaries this movie was about, who died to bring the message of salvation to the Waodanis, would be deeply disappointed that the name of Jesus was not even mentioned in this movie. I know I was. But even if this movie wasn't meant to be about salvation, it doesn't even pass as entertainment.
The only good thing about this movie was the popcorn I ate.

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