Corny, goofy, and with some of the worst non-acting you ever saw: It doesn't get much worse than Tom Selleck as an effete fop. Try and hear him say "Por-too-gahl" without busting out laughing.
Or Rachel Ward playing Queen Isabela as a shallow minded slut who gives Columbus money because she was horny for him. Seriously, this film claims that! Try and reconcile that with the real life history: Isabella was a sharp, powerful queen who presided over the uniting of her nation, and one of the most devout Catholics to ever be on the throne. There's good reason she's called Isabela La Catolica and the Defender of the Faith.
And Columbus as a supposed charming rake? (Actually this actor comes across as a conceited ass in love with his own reflection.)Oh yeah, and showing his wife as a hot young thing...Columbus married a widow older than him, for her money.
Please! Columbus was a driven, obsessed religious fanatic who thought the world was coming to an end in hislifetime, a believer in The End Times who thought he would play a role in Arrmageddon.
Which, of course, is the worst thing the film does. It whitewashes genocide, doesn't show Columbus as the man who killed at least 800,000 Taino Indians, chopping off hand if they didn't give him enough gold, handing over Indian girls for his soldiers to rape as rewards for jobs well done, feeding Indian bodies to his dogs, and personally raping Indian women and enslaving both Indians and Africans. And he went to prison in Spain, for falsely imprisoning and torturing Spaniards.
Skip this travesty and see the far better films, Surviving Columbus or Columbus Didn't Discover Us. And unlike this sanitized fiction, these two films are the truth. And you can find them for free on Youtube.
Or Rachel Ward playing Queen Isabela as a shallow minded slut who gives Columbus money because she was horny for him. Seriously, this film claims that! Try and reconcile that with the real life history: Isabella was a sharp, powerful queen who presided over the uniting of her nation, and one of the most devout Catholics to ever be on the throne. There's good reason she's called Isabela La Catolica and the Defender of the Faith.
And Columbus as a supposed charming rake? (Actually this actor comes across as a conceited ass in love with his own reflection.)Oh yeah, and showing his wife as a hot young thing...Columbus married a widow older than him, for her money.
Please! Columbus was a driven, obsessed religious fanatic who thought the world was coming to an end in hislifetime, a believer in The End Times who thought he would play a role in Arrmageddon.
Which, of course, is the worst thing the film does. It whitewashes genocide, doesn't show Columbus as the man who killed at least 800,000 Taino Indians, chopping off hand if they didn't give him enough gold, handing over Indian girls for his soldiers to rape as rewards for jobs well done, feeding Indian bodies to his dogs, and personally raping Indian women and enslaving both Indians and Africans. And he went to prison in Spain, for falsely imprisoning and torturing Spaniards.
Skip this travesty and see the far better films, Surviving Columbus or Columbus Didn't Discover Us. And unlike this sanitized fiction, these two films are the truth. And you can find them for free on Youtube.