End Of The Spear 2005

Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune: End of the Spear is a childish and visually repetitive movie, ham-fisted, proselytizing and overtly simplified. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: [Director] Hanon seems more interested in exploiting his setting's lush green beauty than exploring the psyches of his bland Bible-thumpers. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Not an emotional powerhouse so much as a dutiful public service announcement. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: The slickly produced Christian docudrama End of the Spear recounts with spiritual breathlessness the circumstances surrounding the real-life killings of five missionaries at the hands of a violent indigenous Amazon tribe in Ecuador in 1956. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: It's an ooga-booga movie dressed in 'anthropological' empathy. Read more

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: The production is sometimes so handsome, the scenery so compelling, that you almost forget about the melodramatic missteps and the bad wigs. Read more

Stephen Becker, Dallas Morning News: Under Jim Hanon's direction, the film manages to get its point across without coming off as heavy-handed or overtly religious. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Filmmakers don't need stories with a religious agenda any more than they need ones with an irreligious one. They don't need stories with any agenda, frankly. They just need good stories. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: Though designed by director and co-writer Jim Hanon to be spiritually uplifting, the story feels as whitewashed and disingenuous as an episode of Lassie, with the natives emerging as savage buffoons. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: What does hold back this terrifically detailed and often-entertaining effort are the limitations of the script and uneven acting. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: Too bad this sincere but inept movie doesn't do justice to any of the real people whose powerful story it tells. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

John Anderson, Variety: Although overly earnest and often stilted, the film should find great favor principally among religious auds, and a long life on the home-vid shelves. Read more

Mark Holcomb, Village Voice: Coy crypto-Christian claptrap masquerading as feel-good ethnography. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Although the film invests time among the tribesmen, it never really explores the idea that one man's missionary work is another's ideological aggression. And the movie is tentative, dramatically speaking. Read more