Exceptional artistic and historic care blend with charming cinematography, to render a visual experience that transcends into an emotional one. Not just one church's story. A universal story. Youth against the world. Virtue against violence. Anyone can relate to this film. It combines all the elements.

You get a light-hearted view of one young man's experience in a remote and unusual part of the world, at a time when the world was just about to start shrinking. There are family values. Individual challenges. Real-life stresses hurled from nature and cultural contrast.

The photography is utterly charming in its balance. It is not a slow film, any more than "Castaway" was a slow film. The difference between these two films is that one pits a single man against the world and against himself, while the other pits a young man against an utterly alien life which he manages to blend into his own. The "slowness" of the Pacific island life is micro-viewed to reveal that there are actually exciting and humorous details of daily life; while macro-viewed to show the occasional punctuation of extreme chaos and challenge,change and redirection.

Everyone wins in this film. Conflicts range from mutual culture and social shock, to static compromise, and eventually up to complete resolution.

See a South Pacific adventure that is, for once, totally based on real life and real historic occurrences.

Thoroughly a pile of crap. What is more perplexing is how I ever came to watch this nonsense. Bringing the dead kid alive was enough for me, THE END!

Sorry, your review is too short. Tough I am done with this matter.

I am a fan of Anne Hathaway. That was the primary reason I decided to watch this film. Unfortunately, her part is small and one dimensional. That is not her fault.

A story of a missionary bringing his "truths" to the (spiritually) ignorant savages is, of course, built on a faulty and culturally biased premise. This story trips over all the basic clichés. The fact that it is a true story makes it worse and not really special. Millions have gone to other lands to proselytize for many different churches, often in primitive circumstances.

But primitive or "undeveloped" societies are not necessarily deficient. I appreciated the scene in the movie where the villagers sit around a radio and John leaves. He finds one villager playing a guitar beautifully and seems to realize that the changes being introduced to this island society, including changes brought about by his church, come with a cost.

The production values were fine. The depiction of the storm on the water was well done. And I appreciated the acting, which seemed genuine. But all of these were hampered by the script. A few scenes were enjoyable, I thought, but not enough to make the entire worth viewing.