Metacritic reviews

Passionate performances from De Niro and Jeremy Irons in this stark but thematically complex historical drama.

Powerful and atmospheric, if oddly structureless, The Mission is a magnificently filmed and strongly political view of the conflict between church, state and capitalism.

The Mission is beautiful to look at, features impeccable period and setting detail, and offers a fascinating and tragic backstory, but it falls short in many simple human qualities. Overall, it's an impressive motion picture, but lacks the epic greatness sometimes associated with it.

The Mission is majestic, sometimes moving, sometimes mawkish. Should you choose to accept it, your religious tolerance will be tested. But there are rewards -- fascinating insights into the byzantine business of diplomacy and gorgeous photography of the roaring Iguazu Falls, an eden of fog and roaring water, and of the sleepy walled city of Cartagena.

All that was needed to pull these elements together was a structure that would clearly define who the characters were, what they stood for and why we should care about them. Unfortunately, that is all that is missing.

While an impressive production, THE MISSION tries to do so much that little is explored fully. Irons's character is really more an icon than a man, as is De Niro's. Perhaps most distressing is the fact that THE MISSION is yet another film made by Europeans or Americans that, while sympathetic to the plight of South American Indians, portrays them as an indistinguishable mass of childlike innocents just waiting to be exploited by outsiders.

A singularly lumpy sort of movie. The film's most riveting sequence comes at the very beginning, when we see a crucified Jesuit missionary being tossed - cross and all - into the river and carried over the spectacular Iguassu Falls. Nothing that follows, including more pretty scenery and quaint costumes, comes close to equaling the drama of that one sequence - about a character who remains forever anonymous.

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 climax is brutal, De Niro and Irons are impressive as the opponents who become soul mates; yet The Mission manages to be both magnificent and curiously uninvolving, a buddy movie played in soutanes.

The script is based on a little-known but nonetheless intriguing historical incident in mid-18th century South America, pitting avaricious colonialists against the Jesuit order of priests. The fundamental problem is that the script is cardboard thin, pinning labels on its characters and arbitrarily shoving them into stances to make plot points.

The Mission is everything a movie should be -- magnificently produced, epic in scope, serious in theme -- everything, that is, but good. Hamstrung by an unworkable script, the disastrous casting of Robert De Niro and, presumably, the strain of shooting in the Colombian jungle, director Roland Joffe' has come up with an indigestible lump of sanctimony that rarely goes beyond its good intentions.