The Killing Fields (film)
1985
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A film critic's review of "The Mission", a historical drama about a slave trader and a missionary in South America in the 18th century. The reviewer praises the film's locations, actors, and atmosphere, but criticizes its lack of cohesion and logic. He suggests that the film was inspired by the true story of Dith Pran, a Cambodian survivor of the Khmer Rouge.
- The Killing Fields movie review (1984) | Roger Ebert
The movie begins in the early days of the journalistic...
- The Mission movie review & film summary (2023) | Roger Ebert
John Allen Chau, the protagonist of "The Mission," grew up...
- The Killing Fields movie review (1984) | Roger Ebert
Rated 4/5 Stars • Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/28/24 Full Review Jacob B While the pacing could've used some work, The Mission is otherwise a compelling based-on-true-events religious drama with ...
- (28)
- Roland Joffé
- PG
- Robert De Niro
- People
- Crime
- Culture
- Ideology
- Violence
- Verdict
Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) is a Jesuit operating in what is now Argentina's Misiones province, on the borders of Portuguese and Spanish territory, in 1750. His relatively gentle task of preaching Christianity to the indigenous Guaraní people is interrupted by the enterprises of Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro), a slave trader, who sets up giant ...
Everything goes wrong for Mendoza when his girlfriend dumps him for his own brother at the town carnival. (Incidentally, the carnival troupe dressed in what appear to be 20th-century Ku Klux Klan outfits are actually Nazarenos – Catholic penitents following a completely separate tradition from Seville). Mendoza reacts pretty badly to this news, sto...
Soon, Mendoza is helping to build a reduction in the jungle, and having tribal markings painted on his chest by nubile Guaraní women. But disaster is just around the corner in the shape of Cardinal Altamirano (Ray McAnally), who has been sent to bring the Jesuits to heel and make sure the slaveholding traders get their way. "I had arrived in South ...
Father Gabriel takes the cardinal on a tour of the reductions, where profits are shared equally among the indigenous and European reduction inhabitants. "There's a French radical group that teaches that doctrine," says the cardinal, somewhat prophetically. The French radical Gabriel Bonnot de Mably started to write proto-communist works in the 1750...
At this point, anyone familiar with South American history will start to feel vaguely sick at the prospect of inevitable onscreen genocide. Lo and behold, the Europeans team up to destroy the native culture, enslave and abuse indigenous people, and pile up babies to murder. All of this is horribly accurate. The battle sequences dramatising the Guar...
Powerful and atmospheric, if oddly structureless, The Mission is a magnificently filmed and strongly political view of the conflict between church, state and capitalism.
This is a drama, not an "action film," but the movie has extended violent ending, and sometimes is shocking in that finale. Jeremy Irons, as the dedicated Jesuit who heads the mission, and Robert De Niro in a surprise role as the killer slave-trader-turned-repentant priest are both excellent in their leading roles.
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 66% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critics consensus reads, " The Mission is a well-meaning epic given delicate heft by its sumptuous visuals and a standout score by Ennio Morricone, but its staid presentation ...
Oct 31, 1986 · The Mission: Directed by Roland Joffé. With Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Aidan Quinn. Eighteenth-century Spanish Jesuits try to protect a remote South American tribe in danger of falling under the rule of pro-slavery Portugal.
