Movie review 'Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle' - The Andy Serkis' film is immaculate

Netflix movie ‘Mowgli: The King of the Jungle’ is finally here after a long wait of five years and has opened to a number of favourable reviews that has taken the movie’s success to unimaginable heights.

The Andy Serkis’ directorial has exposed the darkness of the wilderness in its most crude, raw form unlike the Disney’s rebranding of the Rudyard Kipling’s famed tale that had made it into a whimsical children’s book.

As Hindustan Times puts it, “Kipling was a ‘child of the British empire’. He was born in Bombay and grew up speaking Hindi. When he was still a child, he was sent away to England, which he absolutely hated. This sense of not belonging to one place, of being caught between two worlds, is perhaps the central theme of Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle.”

This coincides with the character of Mowgli (played by a very moving Rohan Chand), who after being born and raised in the wild, is sent to live with humans in the ‘man village’.

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle

Acclaimed actor and director Andy Serkis reinvents Rudyard Kipling’s beloved masterpiece, in which a boy torn between two worlds accepts his destiny and beco...

“He is kept in a cage, poked at with sticks and gawked at by other kids, who see him as a strange new creature - neither a man nor the wolf that he believes himself to be. He approaches his food on all fours, with childlike curiosity - a single moment that captures both aspects of his personality. But he can’t stomach it - the flavours of a cooked, seasoned meal send him retching into his corner,” adds Hindustan Times.

The movie represents the stoic hero, Bagheera (played by Christian Bale) and the villain (a glorious over-the-top Benedict Cumberbatch) as two sides of the same coin, as victims of the same tragedy.

“One of them chose to react to his circumstances with anger and bitterness, while the other chose to dedicate his life to saving others from his own fate, with empathy and love.”

With its magnanimous visual effects and graphics that are captivating beyond imagination, ‘Mowgli: King of the Jungle’ is meant for the bigger screen.

The small screen undoubtedly takes away from the staggering motion capture work that Serkis’ team have done in the film. He’s a master and a pioneer of the technology, which he has played with previously in major franchises such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Planet of the Apes.

As far as the projection of talking animals is concerned, the film does a fantastic job at giving them an unnervingly expressive trait.

Baloo, in particular, is given several small ticks - he seems to have a perpetual cold, and has the face of a bare-knuckle boxer - that add a whole new dimension to the character, which Serkis plays as a cross between Mr Miyagi from Karate Kid and Burgess Meredith from Rocky.

The film, although has a loose connect with India with just one Indian in its cast (Freida Pinto), is undoubtedly impactful, strong and here to stay. As per the Hindustan Times review, it is worthy of recovering four out of five stars.