A new review in these lockdown times, a movie for chilly nights.
Jungleland is a movie directed by Max Winkler, released in November 2020.
A young man, « Lion » (Jack O’Connell), his dog, and his brother Stanley (Charlie Hunnam) end up traveling across the United States to solve a debt to a local crime boss(Jonathan Majors), by participating in a bare-knuckle boxing tournament, and by get a young mysterious woman, Sky (Jessica Barden) to another crime boss.
As long as the trip goes on, the movie you expect to be another « boxing movies » genre kind of becomes darker, following the two brothers, Lion and his manager-brother Stanley, in their complex relationship, with Sky acting like a revealing element of their issues.
The trio learns to socialise with each other and perspectives start to shift, without sparkles, without grand gesture, anonymously, slowly, coldly but surely.
Max Winkler offers us a darker boxing movie, on the not-so-shiny and dreamy side of the USA., and it is reflected on the cinematography as well as the dialogues and scenario : the atmosphere is shallow, dark, the settings are banal and anonymous, the light present but never frontal.
Jungleland is maybe not the movie of the decade, but it proposes to the public a boxing trip, questioning family, relationships, and ethics through its characters who are struggling, on the ring and out of it mostly. A movie oscillating between intimacy and violence, between the search for freedom and independance and necessities.