Jungle

Australian director Greg McLean's true-life survivalist story is set in 1981, when 21-year-old Yossi Ghinsberg (a purposely emaciated Daniel Radcliffe) leaves his concerned Israeli family to spend a year traveling and joins a backpacking expedition in Bolivia. Yossi is befriended in La Paz by Karl (Thomas Kretschmann), an Austrian who spins tales about tribes and rivers of gold, deep in the Amazonian jungle. Impulsively, Yossi convinces two other trekkers—Kevin (Alex Russell), an American photographer, and Marcus (Joel Jackson), a Swiss schoolteacher—to join them on the Tuichi River. As their trail-leader, Karl claims not only to know the rainforest territory but he also shows them a map, indicating just where they will walk. He sets a gung-ho pace which soon causes friction that results in the original foursome deciding to split into pairs. While Karl and Marcus continue to trudge on-foot, impatient Kevin opts to build a raft to sail down the rapids, accompanied by Yossi. But shortly after they launch, Yossi is thrown into the churning water. Wearily dragging himself to shore with a bad head wound, Yossi engages in a man-versus-nature struggle, encountering one ominous obstacle after another while grievously suffering, both physically and mentally. Based on Ghinsberg's 1993 memoir Back from Tuichi, the script fails to flesh out any of the supporting characters, placing the full weight of the somewhat formulaic story on Yossi and his drug-enhanced hallucinations. Optional. (S. Granger)