Movie Review: 'End of the Spear'--90

Great movie--I say that without hesitation. This won't be like the Left Behind movie (no offense) whose production company was sued by Tim LaHaye for making a crummy film.* I think this movie is well-made and one of which the Christian community can be proud.

The story is powerful. Here's how Al Mohler introduces it:

The End of the Spear is a retelling of the story of the martyrdom of missionaries Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Roger Youderian, and Ed McCully by Waodani tribesmen in Ecuador in 1956 -- and many Christians have been eagerly awaiting the film's release.

This is one of the classic narratives of Christian missions. Eventually, the widows of these five missionaries led the majority of the Waodani to faith in Christ, ending decades of tribal killings. Steve Saint, the son of Nate Saint, maintains a ministry among the Waodani even now, after having been "adopted" by Mincaye, the very tribesman who killed his father.

The story of the five missionary martyrs and their families has been recounted in several books and films -- most famously Elisabeth Elliot's two books, Shadow of the Almighty and Through Gates of Splendor. Generations of young evangelicals have drawn courage and inspiration from these testimonies, and the larger story of the evangelization of the Waodani people.

Again, great film. I liked the score, the sweeping shots of the jungle from the air (filmed in Panama), the characterization of the tribal people (though as in every movie, they were too fat to fool anyone who ever actually lived in the jungle eating speared monkeys. The male actors, more Spanish than Indian, had obviously been shaving very closely to look more authentic--but I just kept seeing those thick Basim whiskers and wondering when and where and how and why they shaved every morning). One great element was the portrayal of various relationships, especially between Nate Saint and his son, and between Mincaye and other members of the tribe as they wrestle with how to handle the outsiders.

My criticisms were few: (1) The film made it appear that the widowed missionary wives just naturally moved in with the Indians who speared their husbands, as if they were all neighbors and the whole thing some sort of misunderstanding. The film does show the Indians arguing privately about killing the women too, but there's no sense of how terrified these women must have been, and how difficult a choice it must have been for them. There is little shown of the bitterness and hostility some of the women must have struggled with. I realize they were missionaries--but they were human too. Moving in with and loving those people was at least as heroic and as remarkable as what their husbands had done. After 50 years, isn't it still the courage and self-less love of those women that inspires us all? And isn't that what finally reached the warring tribesmen? Yet the film slips past this amazing, agonizing, soul-searching as if it were no decision at all.

(2) I know from an interview I watched that Steve Saint practically grew up with the tribe--or spent several years living among them anyway. In the movie, it seems he's among them for at most six or eight weeks before returning to the States--where he will remain for forty years. Steve had learned their ways and established meaningful roots among the tribe that made it easier for him to bring his own family to Ecuador years later, but that was not clear.

(3) Finally, as an adult Steve learns who killed his father. In the movie he is handed a spear and he shouts and acts as if he will kill the man. In reality, I am sure--without verifying it--that did not happen. When a man has lived among a people as missionary, always knowing that the men of the tribe had killed the men of his "tribe," he has put away the sword long ago. The scene was written for cinematic effect, but seemed exaggerated to me. The same could have been accomplished had he held the spear, had a brief dark look in his eyes, and through two or three flashbacks remembered the times as a child when he was the most hurt and angry over the death. When the flashbacks end, he breaks the spear over his knee. "End of the spear," he says, or something a bit more subtle. But as it is, seeing the missionary act as he does in the film was just weird to me.

(4) Chad Allen was cast as Nate Saint and as Steve Saint. That was odd too--the boy grows up and magically turns into his father. This was made more complicated by the fact that the tribal people did not appear to have aged at all. Instead of aging them, the director showed us that forty years had passed by covering them in pancake makeup. But there's a bigger problem with Chad Allen. You should see the movie anyway; pay the money and feel good about it. But for a little more on the Chad Allen controversy, click on Al Mohler.

*(Such action is not very charitable, but consider--an author can sell movie rights to any of a flock of suitors. They'll pay an initial cost, then a percentage of profits. A bad film not only hurts the writer's credibility, but can cost him a great deal of what he might have made had he sold his rights to someone else. But then, there's caveat emptor.)