…(Diaz) manages an impossible feat instead. He expands the story of Magellan while shrinking the man at the same time. The film follows the explorer from the shores of Malacca, Malaysia in 1511 through his crossing of the Pacific to, finally, his arrival and brutal death on the island of Cebu in the Philippines in 1521. However, Diaz opens and closes the film by focusing not on Magellan himself but rather on the indigenous populations that encountered him. Though it may be Diaz’s first film not in his native Tagalog, it remains a thoroughly Filipino picture..-The Spool

“The scale of the film remains resolutely epic, in part because Diaz is patient and in part because he’s insistent on telling this story of conquest and domination on his terms.”-Washington Post