"(...) The Mission is a haunting spectacle, it is serious and passionate and in many ways successful; it provides Jeremy Irons with a chance for his purest and most searing film performance, and it gives Robert De Niro another of those nearly impossible physical challenges he thrives on. But the falls may be what you remember most: They’re The Mission scene-stealers. Director Roland Joffé uses their scale and the ferocious implacability of their power as more than a backdrop to this true story—a power struggle between the monarchies of Spain and Portugal in which the fate of the Jesuit order and a nation of Indians rested in the balance. The falls become almost the force of fate: Watching Irons make his first, heart-stopping climb up their slippery rock walls is a visualization of the mettle of those early Jesuits in the face of almost every obstacle. (...)” (Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 14, 1986)