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pass through the revolving door marked fellow travellers, sporting beards and threadbare clothes.

Twilight star Pattinson would have been a better choice as Fawcett.

Sienna Miller does well in a non-role as Fawcett’s stay-at-home wife.

The real-life explorer made several journeys between 1905 and 1954. Rather than streamlining the story into two trips, the script plods on, marking every stop from the Irish countryside to London and Bolivia.

There are alligators on the river and treachery in the hearts of men. They are attacked by cannibals, ditched by guides and face starvation and illness.

This wants to be a film about obsession, faith and spirituality, but it never finds the transcendence it manfully strives for.