@Jacinto Cupboard said:

It's as slow as molasses on a winter's morning. The 'arty' camera tricks are pretentious and add nothing to the story. Even the often sublime landscapes are made to look dull thru repetition. There are clumsy continuity errors. The script is stilted and trite. The underlying religious, political and philosophical issues are treated without nuance.

And my oh my, the accents thing. To be clear I have an open mind about this. While I appreciate the lengths that The Passion of the Christ went to with linguist authenticity, I would not suggest that sort of thing is obligatory. But this business of characters speaking English, a language they would never have been speaking, but in comic accents, is beyond the pale.

I don't want to crap on the film, but IIRC, there's a scene wherein the missionaries swim from their boat to land that is followed by one where, immediately after, they move through a cave in their dry clothes. I was disappointed by this seeming error in Scorsese's film. I dug the movie's pacing though.

Some of the stuff is pure film school pretention. In one scene where Rodrigues wades ashore, he is jump edited several times to be further along towards the beach, yet the waves etc show no such edit. All very clever and it must have been a difficult effect to achieve, but aside from looking good it is baffling as to what it means. If I stretch myself I could talk myself into thinking it is a visual metaphor for the 'unchanging nature of things': but I can't even convince myself that it is deliberate. Not the least because similar 'jump cuts' occur in other places. Ferreira disappears behind a cart. (Why? The character doesn't disappear in the narrative.) Then there is the overhead (and sideways) footage of priests climbing steps. More jump cuts. Is the purpose of the shot being overhead to suggest a God like view? Why then that particular scene and no others? The answer I suspect is that its stark vertical lines with black robed priests crossing them just looks good.

I think your memory might be tricking you with regard to the pacing. There's an awful lot of stodgy dialog taking place in wooden huts and caves (with desaturated color palette). As much as I admire Garfield and Driver as actors, they have neither the chemistry nor energy here to lift the script above dreary. Significantly, we are given no reason to care or have concern for these characters.