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Christopher Columbus: The Discovery

Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992)

August. 21,1992
|
4.4
|
PG-13
| Adventure History

Genoan navigator Christopher Columbus has a dream to find an alternative route to sail to the Indies, by traveling west instead of east, across the unchartered Ocean sea. After failing to find backing from the Portugese, he goes to the Spanish court to ask Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand for help. After surviving a grilling from the Head of the Spanish Inquisition Tomas de Torquemada, he eventually gets the blessing from Queen Isabella and sets sail in three ships to travel into the unknown. Along the way he must deal with sabotage from Portugese spies and mutiny from a rebellious crew.

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SpuffyWeb
1992/08/21

Sadly Over-hyped

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Dirtylogy
1992/08/22

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

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Aneesa Wardle
1992/08/23

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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Deanna
1992/08/24

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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SnoopyStyle
1992/08/25

Christopher Columbus (Georges Corraface) is searching for support of his mission of exploration. He is certain of one sea connecting Europe to Marco Polo's discovery. The Portugese rejects him. King Ferdinand (Tom Selleck) and Queen Isabella (Rachel Ward) of Spain want to spread Christianity. Beatriz (Catherine Zeta-Jones) falls for Columbus. Inquisitor Father Tomas de Torquemada (Marlon Brando) interrogates him and his quest is rejected for countering religious doctrine. After getting royal acceptance, Columbus is able to convince doubting sailors and Martin Pinzon (Robert Davi) to support the voyage. Columbus faces sabotage, deprivation, brutality, and native revolt.The story is fit for a historical drama. There are good bits and pieces but the overall is not that good. It looks inferior. This came out around the same time as "1492: Conquest of Paradise". Neither are terribly good movies but at least 1492 has the look of an epic. Tom Selleck has no business playing the Spanish king. He's basically Magnum, P.I. with a jewel bedazzled coat. It's laughable. By comparison, Marlon Brando is nowhere near as bad. Georges Corraface is functional but he isn't the biggest name. There are a couple of familiar faces like Zeta-Jones and Benicio Del Toro. There is limitation to the intensity. This is not quite good enough.

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caligariscabinet
1992/08/26

This great swashbuckler is completely underrated! Made in the style of the 1940s adventures with Tyrone Power, this film is fun and exciting and I definitely recommend it. And the cast! It's so cool to see the great Brando pass the proverbial torch to next generation actors Benecio Del Toro and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Rachel Ward is excellent as Queen Isabella and Robert Davi is superb. People expected to get a serious drama about Columbus but what they got was much more fun and for this people complain? The shots are beautiful, filmed on the open seas, and the adventure is non-stop. I watched it again this this Columbus Day- what a treat!

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smatysia
1992/08/27

This seems really to be an old-fashioned adventure film, the kind the studios churned out in great numbers in the 1940's. Maybe an Errol Flynn vehicle. That's the way Georges Corraface plays it, and it's okay. Not great, but okay. Marlon Brando totally mailed it in, as he was wont to do in his later years. Tom Selleck is a wonderful actor, but he really couldn't pull it off in this one. Rachel Ward was much more believable as Queen Isabella, regal, with more than a little bit of religious fanaticism. She also played it with minimal make-up, looking very forty-ish, something many actresses of her stature and beauty would have refused. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Benicio del Toro put in decent showings, given the limitations of the material. The scriptwriters were probably in a bit of a quandary, since the occasion (500th anniversary) called for a hagiography, but on the other hand, political correctness makes Colon out to be a villain. They tried to split the difference, and it didn't work. But over-all, this film is not as bad as some make it out to be. Oh, and mention must be made of the beauty of Tailinh Forest Flower as the Indian chieftain's daughter. Wow!

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Colonel Ted
1992/08/28

Columbus must have turned in his grave because this is one of the worst films of the '90s, devoid of anything that could make it work on every level. It's a very old-fashioned adventure story, except in the old days they knew how to make film's like these. Director John Glen (who made some of the James Bond films) badly handles what little action there is and his direction is uninspired and unintentionally camp. The film looks like it was made in the '70s and there is no trace of style at all. The scenes on the islands with the Indians are a hoot. Production quality is poor (the ships look like they were made from cardboard), but that nothing compared to the terrible acting. Selleck and Ward as Ferdinand and Isabella are terrible, as is Corraface as Columbus, and the only pain Brando is giving out as Torqumada is by his mumbling performance. The script is based entirely in cliché terms and ideas are half hatched. It also bares a worrying resemblance to Carry on Columbus. The editing is some of the worst ever done for a film with scenes put together in slap-dash fashion with no sense of time or coherence. An object lesson in how NOT to make a film on every level. It even fails on its simplest level: to portray the courage and vision that these men had to cross the "ocean of darkness". Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise is so much better in every way that it doesn't do justice to be mentioned it in the same review.

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