Jun­gle – first look review

Here’s one def­i­n­i­tion of a gap-year from hell: end­ing up lost and alone in the Ama­zon, fac­ing down pan­thers, snakes, quick­sand, and starvation.

Pre­mier­ing at the Mel­bourne Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, Jun­gle tells the true sto­ry of Israeli Yos­si Ghins­berg (Daniel Rad­cliffe), who fol­lows his ambi­tion to ​“escape the well-worn paths” by jour­ney­ing to Bolivia. There, he and fel­low trav­ellers Mar­cus (Joel Jack­son), a Swiss school­teacher, and Kevin (Alex Rus­sell), an Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er, are lured into an off-map trek by mys­te­ri­ous Aus­tri­an Karl (Thomas Kretschmann), who tempts the trio with promis­es of a ​“hid­den world” of lost tribes, rivers of gold, and Nation­al Geo­graph­ic-wor­thy pho­to ops.

Once in the jun­gle, tem­pers fray as Mar­cus’ injured feet slows down the hike and Kevin begins to doubt Karl’s abil­i­ty. So they split up, with Yos­si and Kevin head­ing for the town of Rur­ren­abaque by raft, where they are thrown-off and sep­a­rat­ed by rapids.

In real life, Ghins­berg sur­vived three weeks wan­der­ing along the Tuichi Riv­er before an expe­di­tion mount­ed by Kevin reached him. He now lives part­ly in New South Wales, which would explains the project’s Antipodean ori­gins: the film is direct­ed by Wolf Creek’s Greg McLean, and apart from Rad­cliffe and Kretschmann, the core cast is round­ed out by Australians.

And, bar­ring some time in Colom­bia and Bolivia, most of the film was shot in south­east Queens­land, which proves a bland sub­sti­tute for the actu­al Ama­zon basin. It doesn’t help that cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ste­fan Dus­cio shoots in flat, bright, TV-ready com­po­si­tions that leech the land­scape of pow­er. Wern­er Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitz­car­ral­do spoiled the pot for any future for­eign-adven­tur­er-in-the-Ama­zon films, espe­cial­ly regard­ing on-loca­tion veracity.

Justin Monjo’s script, adapt­ed from Ghinsberg’s pub­lished account of his expe­ri­ence, is well ordered but work­man­like. A thornier film might have dug a lit­tle deep­er into the fair-weath­er friend­ship of the four hik­ers. Yos­si and Kevin’s aban­don­ment of Mar­cus to the care of the shady Karl seems unscrupu­lous, espe­cial­ly when we learn that not only was the Aus­tri­an a want­ed crim­i­nal, but that he and Mar­cus nev­er made it out of the jun­gle alive.

Rad­cliffe, wield­ing a suf­fi­cient­ly un-dis­tract­ing attempt at an Israeli accent, con­tin­ues to be a spir­it­ed and capa­ble team play­er, throw­ing his wiry frame into the phys­i­cal demands of the mate­r­i­al with good spir­it. But his Yos­si is miss­ing a few dra­mat­ic shad­ings, some­thing to bring out the blink­ered­ness that leads peo­ple so deep into the wild.

In fact, like the actu­al Into the Wild, Jun­gle is rather more focused on sanc­ti­fy­ing the tri­als of its itin­er­ant hero than throw­ing them into per­spec­tive: by the end of the film, Ghinsberg’s suf­fer­ing comes to assume a qua­si-reli­gious dimen­sion. A final title card that describes him as a ​“pas­sion­ate trav­eller still in tran­sit on plan­et Earth” (he’s now a moti­va­tion­al speak­er) caps off the film’s TED Talks-friend­ly vision of the risks of wan­der­lust. Unlike its lead, Jun­gle refus­es to stray from the beat­en track.