The true-life figure driving the transporting The Lost City of Z (15, 141 mins, ★★★★★) is Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), a jobbing British Army serviceman of lowly descent who, while mapping the Bolivia-Peru border in 1906, became distracted by rumours of a mysterious city of gold – the same talk, we note, that lured Conquistadors to their doom.
For indie nearlyman James Gray, this is a bold move into Herzog-Coppola territory: an obsessed character, the leafy unknown. “Success could change your lot considerably,” quoth a Royal Geographic Society bigwig to Fawcett; as for our hero, so for his director.
