Plot: The true story of British explorer Percival Fawcett, who begins an expedition to find a lost city in the Amazonian jungle in the 1920's.

I had mixed feelings whether the latest film from director James Gray needs to be seen on the big screen. From what I've seen of this. They've usually not being that interested despite the cast and the general look of it being of high-quality.

But after a surprising amount of high praise from several film festivals and the trailer backing that up enough, I took a chance and went with some sort of expectation.

In the end, I was quite glad to check this out. It showed me something that I have not seen for quite some time, and that traditional story-telling. The structure felt episodic, as if I'm watching an epic from the late 90's/early 00's such as Gladiator or The Last Samurai. This film sort of restores the traditional art of story-telling in movies.

Also, the type of story is not what I have seen for a long time. A film about exploring. It also portrays 1920's England and the western world at that time really well. That feeling of self-proclaiming themselves as the first civilisation and seeing everything else as a step into the unknown.

There is some powerful imagery throughout this film. The cinematography by Darius Khodnji is nothing short of fantastic. The film that he is probably best known for shooting, is David Fincher's Se7en. The constant use of location shooting really gave this film some weight and heft, it made me fully engaged with it and Khodnji's work with camera really elevated the general atmosphere of the film.

A lot of the performances were very good, despite being very low key. Charlie Hunman did a good job as the lead. While his best work is on TV, he was enigmatic enough to keep this film moving. Sienna Miller did a brilliant job as the main supporting role. She contributed to the film so well and was definitely the best performance. Another supporting role that was interesting to watch, was Robert Pattinson's character. He is almost unrecognisable as soon as he arrives on screen, his character really makes you want to more about him.
A couple of small roles that were worth mention was Ian McDiarmid and Tom Holland. It was great seeing McDiarmid in a film again. He hasn't done much since his last outing as Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars. Apart from a bit of TV work, this is his first appearance in a film for 11 years.
As for Holland, I completely forgot he was in this until seeing the cast list afterwards. You don't see him for long, but he has enough presence in the film to warrant a mention.

The only negative I had was the pacing and possibly duration of the film. To be honest, this will be the reason it might not appeal to the masses. It is slow in telling its story and there is one segment of the film that could have been cut out, despite being essential to telling this true story. For me, it's only a minor one. But for a lot of others, this may become a major one.
I almost forgot one negative. A couple of decisions from a certain character was pretty odd.

In the end, this managed to stick with me and felt it to be slowly captivating. It is a fascinating true story that I am amazed a group of studio executives gave the green light. This is a film rich with themes and ideas and they were pretty well executed. I love the look of it, the performances were very good and the action scenes were filmed so well and gave the film a real physical and cinematic sense.

It is a shame that not many people will see it, and I'm not surprised as it won't play well with the masses. But I hope this finds its audience as it is a very well made adventure story that we don't see that often.

Rating: 8/10