Rapa Nui

1994
6.4| 1h47m| R| en
Details

Inter-tribal rivalry leads to a competition to erect a huge statue (moai) in record time before Make can take part in the race to retrieve the egg of a Sooty Tern. The reward for winning this race is to rule the island for one year.

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Reviews

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.
Portia Hilton Blistering performances.
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
SnoopyStyle On Easter Island, the tribes are in a ritualized competition. Every year, each tribe sends a warrior to the Birdman competition to see who will rule the island. Noro (Jason Scott Lee) comes from the ruling tribe 'long ears'. His clueless grandfather chief and his ruthless priest demand larger Moai. He is in love with Ramana (Sandrine Holt) from the tribe 'short ears'. His long time friend Make (Esai Morales) is also in love with Ramana. The demand for Moais has eaten up the resources of the island as scarcities and ecological damage rule.The problem for this movie is the foreign nature of everything. Some of it is laughable even if it's true. Writer/director Kevin Reynolds needed to be especially careful about the unintended comedy. Maybe it's an impossible task given the strange craziness. The story is a mix of Romeo and Juliet and an environmental documentary. There's none like it.
lnery ... and I am very glad I did.I had not seen the movie prior to going there 6 months ago, for two reasons: people told me it was boring, and when I started watching it, I was bothered by the orangey hue of the movie.I'm glad that this time I persisted. By no means a classic, it certainly is entertaining, and the actions scenes are genuinely GOOD. I went to Rapa Nui because I was mesmerized with the idea of an ultra-isolated island where an ecological tragedy happened because of huge stone heads. In fact, I read extensively about the island before visiting it. The reading I recommend the most is Jared Diamond's book "Collapse", which draws from reputable scientific sources and Mr. Diamond's encyclopedic knowledge of geography and biology.I was hoping to find an island of archaeological interest. What I found was an open-air museum that exceeded all my expectations about archeology, and also a very pleasant and delightful place to visit.There is no crime. There is no pollution. The only (tiny) beach has white sand and blue water in a perfect temperature. The natives are incredibly nice and even the tourists were interesting (because, really, who goes there?). Now I have a toddler-sized moai in my living room and many wonderful pictures with stones, moai, sunsets, stones, blue sea, volcanoes, moai, and lots of more stones.And the trees? Around the only town, Hanga Roa, there are many of them! Traumatized with the haunting tale of environment destruction, people are starting to plant crops, and the hotels have beautiful gardens, and the whole town is shady and breezy because of all the trees. It's not all dryness and destruction.I also believe this movie is underrated. Don't go by the negative interviews! The orangey colors of the movie, though lamentable, don't detract from the overall experience, but if you can find a better copy, by all means do so.
ccthemovieman-1 I had two actors in here I usually enjoy watching: Jason Scott Lee ("Map of the Human Heart") and Sandrine Holt ("Black Robe"). It had also had beautiful Easter Island scenery and it had a bunch of pretty half-naked women.What's not to like? Well, the stupid story, for one thing. The dialog was straight out of a Grade B flick, and that's being generous. The characters also were totally unbelievable, thanks to the terrible dialog and fake accents. I couldn't enjoy the beautiful Holt because she was sent to a cave early on and wasn't seen again until near the end of the film.How people, including one of the few national film critics I like - Michael Medved - could rave about this film is totally mind-boggling. It was horrible.
Kriston This movie is well worth the viewing if you're into period films with full frontal nudity, even if it means that Roxine Holt's breasts change their shape whenever there's a close-up. The historical fiction used by this movie try to explain the statues on Easter Island but relies too heavily on the tired theme of the incompetent leader being manipulated by overly ambitious advisors. Surely, if the people were as technologically advanced as the movie suggests, they may have transcended racism and their bizarre class structure.And yet again we see Jason Scott Lee playing the naive, young aboriginal, a part for which he has been typecast in movies like "Map of the Human Heart."If you enjoy Polynesian scenery, and have a mute button to squelch the pathetic English/Hispanic/American/Canadian accents that vary from character to character, and you can stomach the pointless love story in between graphic scenes of gratuitous frontal nudity through the efforts of beautiful body-doubles, you still won't enjoy this movie.