Review: Daniel Radcliffe fights terror and reality in problematic survival story ‘Jungle’
In “Jungle,” as young Israeli adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) and his just-met traveling companions Kevin (Alex Russell) and Marcus (Joel Jackson) make their way through thick, forbidding Amazon forest in uncharted Bolivia, you think, surely we’re heading toward a cannibal reckoning.
That’s because the director, Australian horrormeister Greg McLean (“Wolf Creek,” “The Darkness”) is at heart a visceralist: A fire ant bite merits a zoomed close-up, and when the trio’s enigmatic guide (a tantalizing Thomas Kretschmann) kills and cooks a monkey, every tear and bite is a virtuoso piece of foley crunch.
“Jungle” is a true story, based on Ghinsberg’s memoir of his disastrous 1981 trek, and the real meat of it — pun intended — isn’t fantastical: Yossi gets separated and must fight punishing nature and his deteriorating self just to survive. But eventually that mismatch of foreboding genre terrors with triumph-of-endurance adventure gives “Jungle” a problem of momentum and drama, wherein it never feels exactly bracing or revelatory.
Despite the considerable physicality of the movie, with its impressive cinematography and Radcliffe’s believable, all-in disintegration, it’s more earthbound slog than psychological deep-dive. Even more head-scratching, the movie ends with catch-up info that reveals a larger unsolved mystery about that ill-fated journey, and suddenly Ghinsberg’s unprecedented survival pales in comparison to the other teasingly suspenseful movie that starts unspooling in your head.
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‘Jungle’
Rating: R for language and some drug use
Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes
Playing: Arena Cinelounge Sunset, Hollywood
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