The New World - 2005

by Jonathan Little - 2006-08-30

According to someone who is in love with Colin Farrell (I really have no idea why you would be) this is a good film. To me however it feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be. I will do Farrell justice here at the start of the review however and say that for once his acting is pretty good. He actually does do well in this film, in fact all of the actors do. But that is basically where my enjoyment ended. The story is far too slow. Sure the beginning is nice because it shows off the beauty of the landscape but then it stays at that pace and just gets infuriating. Then the editor decided it would be fun to add some pointless jump cuts. The films slow, adding jump cuts isn't going to make it seem faster its going to make it very confusing.
          Also how does the Indian girl learn English? It just sort of happens suddenly. Then theres Christian Bale's character, he just appears from absolutely nowhere halfway into the film. It just feels completely lost and is very poor story telling like the studio decided to cut 20mins out of the film. Even so it is so slow I wanted to turn it off 40mins in as nothing was actually happening at any speed. One thing the film does do well is make you feel bad for being British and that previous generations ruined those untouched lands and that now those areas are big urban sprawls instead of places of beauty.
          This is a film devoid of focus that I didn't enjoy, at least Colin Farrell had a good run and Q'Orianka Kilcher did a brilliant job as Pocahontas. But if you want to watch the story I would just as soon recommend the Disney version.