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The Mission | 
| Director: Roland Joffe
Actors: Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray Mcanally, Aidan Quinn, Cherie Lunghi
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: Video
List Price: $14.98
Buy Used: $3.69
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Rating:  221 reviews
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 126 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 630027120X
UPC: 085391163930
EAN: 9786300271203
ASIN: 630027120X
Theatrical Release Date: October 31, 1986
Release Date: December 4, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Used VHS may not have original jacket cover Used items may have grease marker or sticker on cover. Satisfaction guaranteed on all purchases. ** Possible marking on cover. 100% Satisfaction guaranteed on all purchases. Delivery is 7-14 days for standard mail. **
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields) directs this fuzzy effort at a David Lean-like epic without David Lean's sense of emotional proportion. Lean's most important screenwriting collaborator, Robert Bolt, in fact wrote The Mission, which concerns a Jesuit missionary (Jeremy Irons) who establishes a church in the hostile jungles of Brazil and then finds his work threatened by greed and political forces among his superiors. Robert De Niro is briefly effective as a callous soldier who kills his own brother and then turns to Irons's character to oversee his penance and conversion to the clergy. The narrative and dramatic forces at work in this movie should be more stirring and powerful than they are--the problem being that Joffe is too removed from them to allow us in. --Tom Keogh
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| Customer Reviews: Read 216 more reviews...
 The Mission November 19, 2008
Dayana Sanchez (Oshkosh, WI USA)
I watched The Mission in a class that I'm currently taking about the Literature of Human Rights in Latin America. The Mission is about the colonial time in South America and shows the treatment of indigenous people and human rights. If we really focus on this movie as a human rights oriented, we could see how the Indians were being treated by the Europeans. They would capture, slave them, exploit them, and the Indians have no saying in the matter; for the Europeans they were like animals, they have no voice, they were nothing. So they could do as they wished with them.
On the other hand there were the Jesuits who saw them as humans who needed guidance, understanding, someone who needed to be converted into Christianity, trying to save them.
I see this movie as a way to create awareness about the violation of human rights, to create consciousness. To make us realize that we are the only ones who can change the injustice in our society.
Honestly for anyone who likes a good movie, this is the one. This is a movie that transcends the years and its idea can be applied to our time. In my opinion this movie tries to influence of emotions and feelings to make us think about the current situations that our world is in terms of human rights, because we are the only ones who can change the present and provide a better future by looking at the past.
Mire la mision en una clase que estoy tomando actualmente sobre la literatura de los derechos humanos en America latina. La mision es sobre el tiempo de la colonia en Suramerica y muestra el tratamiento de indigenas y de los derechos humanos. Si nos centramos realmente podemos ver que esta se orienta mucho en mostrar los derechos humanos, podemos ver como a los europeos trataban a los indios. Los capturaban, los esclavizan, los explotan, y los indios no podian defenderse; para los europeos ellos eran como animales, ellos no tenian ninguna voz, no eran nada. Podian hacer con ellos los que les daba la gana.
Por otro lado estaban los jesuitas que los miraban como seres humanos que necesitaban de direccion, comprension, los veian como alguien que necesitaba ser convertido al cristianismo, intentando salvarlos.
Veo esta pelicula como una manera de informar sobre la violacion de los derechos humanos, para crear concientizacion. Para que nos demos cuenta que somos los unicos que podemos cambiar la injusticia en nuestra sociedad.
Honesto para cualquier persona que tenga gusto de una buena pelicula, esta es esa pelicula. Esta es una pelicula que trasciende los anos y su idea se puede aplicar a nuestro tiempo. En mi opinion esta pelicula intenta influenciar nuestras emociones y sentimientos para hacernos pensar en las situaciones actuales de nuestro mundo en terminos de los derechos humanos, porque somos los unicos que podemos cambiar el presente y proveer un futuro mejor mirando el pasado.
The Mission November 14, 2008
Delores C. Haas (New York State)
This movie is probably my all time favorite. I have watched it over and over again. The music is thrilling, gentle, and sad. Most moving performances. I have the sound track also, it is most enjoyable. It is a lesson in life. BRAVO!
Worth watching on so many levels November 10, 2008
Corey Miltimore (Eden Prairie, MN United States)
So much has been written about The Mission and it has received so many plaudits, that it is redundant to re-list them here. Suffice it to say that this film remains hugely worth watching on every significant level: photography, musical score, acting, etc. One can only envy those who get to watch it for the first time.
The bonus documentary about the challenges and advantages of using actual natives to play the Guarani is worth watching as well.
 Panoramic Morality Tale October 23, 2008
Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States)
I was interested in seeing "The Mission" when it first came out. I didn't realize that it would take over 20 years before I finally was able to take it in. It seems to have aged well but, then, most historical epics usually do. I was overwelmed by the magnitude of the cinematography. The falls that we revisit often in the film were worth the price of admission.
The film tells of an historic event in which Jesuit priests created some missions in an area around Brazil's southeastern border. The time was around 1750 during which Spanish and Portugese settlements were expanding and civilizing. The Jesuits expand their missionary work to a remote area as we start following the story. The underlying motives of the settlers and the priests are in conflict and Rodrigo, Robert DeNiro's character, is a man who switched between the two factions. We get the general idea as to what will happen. The same thing always happens in these circumstances. After a lot of talk and frontier diplomacy, conflict ensues and the film ends with a sense that the next generation will have to regroup further into the jungle.
Much of "The Mission" was quite compelling. The dialogue between the priests and the Cardinal was interesting at times and predictible at other times. I was bothered by the director's failure to consider that the children that had significant roles in this film did not age. It left the impression that the incredible transformation from "savage" to converted and cultured took place in less than a year's time.
This is a movie that makes many people mad at "civilization". It really is hard to figure out who are the good guys and, I believe, that was intential. It may be that there isn't more than one who fits that title. Maybe that's too many.
History is not dead by repetitive and cycliical September 27, 2008
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A film that comes from so far away 22 years ago that the story, or the history, of the film is no longer important, but was it important even in 1986? Today the struggle between the two Christian kings of Portugal and of Spain on one hand, though hostile to each other when the other party is absent, and the church on the other hand, a church that is also divided between the European hierarchy that only sees the survival they have to go through in Europe by defending there their interests by sacrificing a few missions in South America. Today these details are irrelevant The Christian church or churches have long abandoned this kind of policy, particularly the Catholic church. But today the general pattern of the story, the massacre, the slaughter, the slaying of a whole Indian, local population to the sole interest of the colonial powers who try to put their hands on the riches and resources of some foreign countries, like oil in Iraq for instance is quite a familiar story. And what about that American war hero who became an American war hero in a war that killed several million people and devastated a whole country for the sole political and economic interests of one country, one country alone. Who cares in the west about the local indigenous population that gets killed by western bullets? Like The Sons of The Pioneers used to sing, "Lie Low, Little Doggies, Lie Low on the Ground". We are living in a world that stands upside down in two ways. It is still standing upside down if we consider normal human ethics that tells us to help the poor and the weak and to respect the goods and property of other people, particularly their national territory. And yet that world that is upside down is in the process of tilting over and then getting upside down a second time, which might bring it upside up and downside down. The champion of deregulated free market jungle economy is nationalizing most of the American banking system and is getting ready to do the same with the car industry that has been playing with bankruptcy for quite a few years now. Less state he says the candidate of the party of this president. Yet this president nationalizes all that is getting into difficult straits by their own fault, but he does not forget that public money is the property of the rich since they did not contribute much and he is trying to give them a financial bonanza for their dumb incompetence. You see the pattern. That pattern that is still alive like hell and kicking like a dumb mule. Don't worry, as usual, before the world gets back to upright many people will be killed and will die. Before Brazil got a president that is starting the reversal of that historical injustice and mistake of 1750, quite a few millions were killed or enslaved or tortured or assassinated or whatever provided death was the end of it. But this film gives you another element of that pattern. The powerful who plan to genocide you manage to present the whole matter in such a way that you have to agree to foot the bill which will hurt you or otherwise the depression that would ensue would not only hurt, it would bring humanity a few hundred million individuals down, lower and shorter. And in the back of their heads they believe that this is sustainable since for at least twenty or thirty years the overpopulation of the world will be slowed down. As these vultures would say: there is always a positive point in any negative event. But the more I try to think positively the more I stand on the side of all these priests, these Jesuits, those who fought and died fighting and those who did not fight and died trying to bring God's word down on earth. The only thing that came for all of them was bullets, bullets and more bullets. Is that pattern human, historical, or plain characteristic of one particular period? But why does it come back up so regularly through the centuries?
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
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