Dir. Jim Hanon
Writ. Jim Hanon, Bill Ewing, Bart Gavignon
Act. Louie Leonardo, Chad Allen, Jack Guzman

If I didn't know any better I would say that this movie is what they show to Christians who are about to go on a mission in a jungle. This movie is ok half the time but when they start getting to the message about Christians spreading Gods word to the noble savage, it loses all sense of movie story telling and becomes a pep rally.

Nate Saint, played by Chad Allen (TV's Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman) is the leader of a group of Christian Missionaries living in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador. He tries to make contact with the native group, the Waoranis, lead by Mincayani, played by Louie Leonardo (Shaft,) and when Saint leads the missionaries into the jungle, the natives, being confused by a lie from their own people, kill Saint and the other four missionaries. After the wives of the men learn of their fate, they decide to join a former native, Dayumae, played by Christina Souza (Pretty Dead Girl,) who became a convert at a young age, and go into the forest to find the tribe. Once there, the women slowly began to convert the natives to Christianity, despite the refusal of the Mincayani, and the warrior men.

Here is the biggest problem with the movie, for the two thirds of the movie, it is a movie that follows a script and for the most part, makes sense. However, once the women show at the camp and begin to convert everyone, it moves way to fast, and it becomes a video promo for Christian Missionaries. The example of this is when I thought the movie was at the end of act II, and Mincayani sits down and tells his wife that he will not change his ways for the foreigners and that he will fight them to the very end. The next scene a voice over says that the missionaries cured the Polio outbreak and over the course of a year, the entire tribe, including Mincayani, converted. Um, excuse me? How can the director spend 2 hours on a film showing how unwilling the leader is to change, and take thirty seconds to explain that he does? I don't know if it is bad story writing or bad directing, I just know that it is bad.

Overall, the acting is OK, but I will give credit to Louie Leonardo and the rest of the cast of Indians who had to learn the native language and was very convincing at it. However, nobody stands out besides that and the acting won't be remembered two months from now.

There are many scenes that show how this is a movie made for or by Christian or missionaries, that's ok, I just don't know if this is a national movie release instead of a made for TV movie. If you go and you are not Christian, you will love the cinematography, of course its hard to make a jungle look bad, but I don't think you will like the rest. I won't give it a bad rating just because of the effort the actors put forth to learn the language, but that and the cinematography are the only reasons.

Brian - the Naked Gun