Jungle

Daniel Radcliffe has come a long way since Harry Potter. In "Jungle" he stars as Yossi Ghinsberg in a true story about survival in the South American jungle. Yossi - along with two friends and a guide - sets off on an adventure, and along the way gets separated from everyone else and has to fight for survival for three weeks, battling wild animals, fire ants, the weather, quicksand and pretty much anything else the jungle could be expected to throw at him. Radcliffe's performance was very good. There are long portions of this that are essentially a one man show, and if Radcliffe had been less than excellent the movie would have suffered. But he pulled it off, and he pulled it off well. The first hour or so of the movie I thought was a little bit lacklustre. It recounts how the four guys meet and then follows them on the start of the trek. To be honest this was little more than four guys hiking through the jungle. It had a bit of a light-hearted, almost "yarn-ish" feel to it at times. There was nothing especially dramatic or exciting involved. But when the four split into two groups, and then Yossi finds himself alone, the movie really takes off. It becomes a survival epic, full of drama and at times seemingly hopeless for Yossi, who falls into hallucinations and hunger. You do spend some time wondering why any of these guys decided to make this journey in the first place. They seemed woefully ill prepared for a long journey through the jungle. In fact, their lack of preparedness would probably make this story quite unbelievable - except for the fact that this is based on the true story of Yossi Ghinsberg, and from what I've read of what happened to him, this seems to be a pretty accurate telling of his experience. (7/10)

I felt I was going to be disappointed from the start of this film, it was really slow and a little dull. But slowly, it picks up, and it picks up, and it finishes as a truly brilliant film. Radcliffe is simply perfect throughout and the development of his state the longer he is in the jungle is phenomenal. The plot and the individual events hardly seems believable, but it's all true and in fact some further gruesome events were omitted. It's difficult to watch in certain scenes, it can be truly grim, but it is so brilliantly displayed. Visually it's beautiful, and the script cannot be faulted. A real gem.