End of the Spear -- March 2006

DO NOT RETURN EVIL FOR EVIL

It’s the early 50s in the Amazon Basin of Ecuador. Five American missionaries, Nate Saint, Jim Eliot, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and Ed McCully, have been trying for a long while to make contact with the Waodani people, a warlike tribe who live on the Curaray River. Their breakthrough comes when Nate Saint devises a method of lowering a basket from the small plane he flies. The basket contains gifts that attract the Waodani’s attention, and eventually they begin leaving their own gifts in the basket. Soon the missionaries land and make actual contact with the Waodani. A few days later, all five lie dead on the riverbank, victims of the spear.

Does this sound violent? It is, but it’s a true depiction of what actually happened to the five men. Over the intervening years, Steve Saint, son of Nate, was approached by many different people who wanted to make a movie about the event. Steve resisted these approaches, believing that the filmmakers either wanted to make a financial killing or massage the story to fit their own purposes. Eventually, though, he met director Jim Hanon and became convinced that Hanon and other backers were unselfish and simply wanted to be part of the telling of the story. The result is a picture that’s well made and a powerful testimony to the Christian gospel.


End of the Spear is narrated by Nate Saint’s son Steve and proceeds mostly through the use of flashbacks. As the picture opens, we see the grown-up Steve and Mincayani, a Waodani warrior central to the story, together on the riverbank where Nate was killed decades ago. The action then flashes back to the time of the encounter, and in the balance of the movie we learn how the Waodani are eventually converted to faith in Jesus Christ. The five missionaries are dead, but their families and others take up the crusade. One key player among the Waodani is Daeyumi, the sister of Mincayani, who bravely makes contact with the missionaries’ wives and goes to live with them. The other is Kimo, a warrior who accepts the message of the gospel despite the scorn of Mincayani and other warriors. The challenge for the remaining missionaries is formidable: they must present the gospel in word pictures and ideas to the illiterate Waodani, who believe that the chief aim in life is to “jump the boa” — that is, to build a record of bravery and violence. For them, to be peaceful is to show weakness, in effect to become “a termite.”


Fast forward to the climax of the film: The grown-up Steve and Mincayani are together on the riverbank. The opportunity of revenge is open to Steve. What will he do? I’ll leave it to you to discover that for yourself.


Time Magazine covered the story of the five missionaries in 1956. Would they do the same today? A local secular reviewer gave End of the Spear two stars, saying that the picture is well-meaning but lacks controversy and conflict, and that little interest is built in any of the characters. This misses the point. It’s true that the film doesn’t contain the usual dramatic entertainment conventions that we’ve come to expect in films, but End of the Spear is about something much more than entertainment. Go and see it. The film is rated PG-13 for certain violent scenes (not gratuitous), though, so you might not want to take anyone who’s a pre-teen. Pay special attention at the end to the footage of the real present-day Waodani people. This makes the picture.


My Rating: 3 stars