The Lost City of Z
2016
**½
Director: James Gray
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen, Ian McDiarmid, Franco Nero, Edward Ashley, Clive Francis, Harry Melling, John Sackville
After his first survey trip to the Amazon in 1905, major Percy Fawcett becomes fixated with finding evidence of an ancient civilization. In the following 20 years, this British explorer makes personal sacrifices to embark on several expeditions to the Amazon jungle to find the Lost City of Z. With this adaptation of David Grann's 2009 non-fiction book, James Gray attempts to create his own Apocalypse Now or Fitzcarraldo. Unfortunately, this fact-based drama and its protagonist do not have the scope, ambition, madness, or obsessiveness to match those iconic works. I blame the episodic and occasionally baffling script, which is unable to hold my sustained attention. One moment, Fawcett is deep in the jungle, the next scene he's safely at home, and before he returns to the Amazon, he does a bit of fighting in the First World War. The members of the Royal Geographical Society ridicule him for his fanciful theories, but when he returns from another expedition without any additional proof, they hail him as a hero. Gray is clearly at awe of the character, but I fail to see what his actual accomplishments are. Charlie Hunnam feels too contemporary for the role.
