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The Mission

1986

Roland Joffé

Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Aidan Quinn ...

7.6

56,398

Adventure. Drama A visually stunning epic, THE MISSION recounts the true story of two men--a man of the sword (Robert De Niro) and a man of the cloth (Jeremy Irons)--both Jesuit missionaries who defied the colonial forces of mighty Spain and Portugal to save an Indian tribe from slavery in mid-18th-century South America. Mendoza (De Niro) is a slave trader and colonial imperialist who murdered his own brother (Aidan Quinn) and seeks penance for his sins ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Rita Kempley The Washington Post	"'The Mission' effectively dramatizes yet another chapter in the ruthless European conquest of the Americas. It'll make you hate the whole of western civilization with every fiber of your being."	POS
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"'The Mission' feels exactly like one of those movies where you'd rather see the documentary about how the movie was made (...) the moments don't add up to a coherent narrative (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	NEU
United Kingdom	Ian Nathan Empire	"Passionate performances from De Niro and Jeremy Irons in this stark but thematically complex historical drama (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of five)"	POS
United Kingdom	Time Out	"Enacted against the stunning backdrop of the Amazon jungle, the action has a rousing, epic quality. What it doesn't have, however, is passion. (...) The Mission manages to be both magnificent and curiously uninvolving"	NEU
United Kingdom	Alex von Tunzelmann The Guardian	"Powerful and atmospheric, if oddly structureless, The Mission is a magnificently filmed and strongly political view of the conflict between church, state and capitalism."	POS
United States	Vincent Canby The New York Times	"The film's most riveting sequence comes at the very beginning (...) Nothing that follows comes close to equaling the drama of that one sequence - about a character who remains forever anonymous"	NEU
United States	Paul Attanasio The Washington Post	"An indigestible lump of sanctimony that rarely goes beyond its good intentions."	NEG
United States	Variety Staff Variety	"Spectacular scenery and an extraordinary high degree of production values can’t conceal serious flaws in 'The Mission' (...) 'The Mission' is probably the first film in which De Niro gives a bland, uninteresting performance."	NEU

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