Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"A Simple Walk Into Mordor" is a travel documentary made by Americans Chris Demarais and Kerry Shawcross back in 2012. The two are massive fans of the "Lord of the Rings" movies/book, so they decided to go on a fairly unique journey through New Zealand, the country where the films were made by Peter Jackson. So far, so good. Unfortunately the execution is extremely underwhelming. First of all, pretty much all the dialogs feel scripted. Another problem is how this documentary, on so many occasions, acts as if they were almost dying out there because it's such a tough walk. And there was not any sarcasm in there. This film took itself far more serious than it had any right to. Apart from that, the length of their journey in terms of kilometers is really nothing that young healthy men should really see as a major challenge. And finally I did not like how the 40-minute documentary lost basically all references to the films the longer it went and when they included some again, it was pretty ridiculous, like a guy randomly appearing with a Gollum mask. Seriously? It embarrasses me to see that the two makers in here are fairly prolific in other film and television projects these days as I cannot really see any talent in here. If you still want to decide for yourself, you can check out the 5-part documentary on world's most famous video website. However, I certainly do not recommend it.
