It's a western set in the (beautiful) missionary jungle with two fight scenes and a swift sex scene suitable for young audiences, and that's sufficient. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 30, 2024

It's much better once the action gets going, as Bernal and Braga escape into the jungle and slowly turn the tables on their pursuers.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 22, 2017

[Ardor] is so stylized and over-the-top, that it's hard to take any serious message it might be aiming at with more than a grain of salt, which is a shame.

| Aug 15, 2017

A strong exercise in genre, but one constricted by its chosen syntax and semantics rather than one that reconfigures and complicates them.

| Original Score: C+ | Feb 22, 2016

Fendrik's attempt to stage cat-and-mouse violence as a hypnagogic trip results in a few brief moments of strange magic, but Ardor too often slips into full-on sleep mode.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 2, 2016

Ardor is essentially George Stevens' Shane set in wettest Argentina, with the distractingly handsome Gael Garca Bernal in the Alan Ladd role.

| Aug 21, 2015

By the time we reached the climactic and fantastically over-the-top showdown, I realized that while the characters were indeed trying to corner the market on smoldering glances, faux-Shakespearean proclamations and in-your-face symbolism...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 14, 2015

Magical realism meets agrarian guerrilla warfare in a tropical political thriller. As aborigine rainforest resistance with help from a mythical half jaguar guerrilla warrior turning up, goes toe to toe with corporate mercenaries pushing them off the land.

| Aug 7, 2015

There's only so much redolent framing one can appreciate in a movie so sluggishly paced and untethered to intrigue.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Aug 6, 2015

Ardor is a Western in spirit, but with a serious lack of tension, it's far less notable than some of its obvious influences.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 20, 2015

It pays homage to classic filmmaking, it's got two fine-looking international stars, and it calls attention to the environmental crisis in the rainforest. It's still a dumb movie.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 17, 2015

As good-looking as the movie and its stars are, "Ardor," whose title refers to a literal state of burning, never manages to catch fire.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 17, 2015

Magical story about a man who emerges from a river to look after a farmer's daughter, the rainforest, and a stunning jaguar.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 17, 2015

"Ardor" lacks tension, maybe because the actors are playing archetypes: Little is said, and there are few surprises.

| Jul 17, 2015

Here is a movie that ends with a can't-miss scenario - a siege on a farmhouse in which the heroes are vastly outnumbered and outgunned - yet still fails to ever quicken your pulse.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 16, 2015

A densely atmospheric, Sergio Leone-steeped western that ultimately proves too reverential for its own good.

| Jul 16, 2015

Much of this movie is bewilderingly slow, while the big action scenes are mostly unbelievable.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 16, 2015

[An] unrelentingly grim and plodding chore of a film.

| Jul 16, 2015

Unfortunately the movie loses this supernatural vibe in the second half, settling into a rather literal-minded revenge tale, though like much Argentinian art cinema it makes effective and poetic use of the natural settings.

| Jul 16, 2015

Writer-director Pablo Fendrik may well have been shooting here for "Pale Rider." But "Ardor" is more like pale imitation.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 16, 2015