The Lost City of Z

A movie about British explorer Percy Fawcett sounds like a good idea on paper.  This guy was a geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist and explorer.  He distinguished himself in WWI even though he was almost 50 years old and he led an expedition into the heart of the Amazon when he was 56. Wow, what a guy!  Doesn’t this sound like it would make an exciting movie, kind of in the vein of Indiana Jones, perhaps?  Well you would be wrong.  The story is excruciating slow, with little tension or suspense.  The cinematography, scenery, costumes are all first rate, and you do get a sense of what an extraordinary individual Fawcett was.  ******SPOILER ALERT******  I was  not satisfied with the ending.  No one knows how Percy Fawcett dies, and their speculative ending seems contrived.  Why  not just end the movie when he and his son are on the train and tell us in the post script about some of the various theories about what happened to him.  I read about these on line and many of them are more interesting than the ending the writer came up with.    All in all, I wouldn’t advise seeing this one in the theater.  Wait until it is on Netflix and watch it in several sittings.  I think that would be way more satisfying.