Jungleland: Movie Review

We have seen many films revolve around boxing and siblings. Some of the more recent ones that come to mind are Warrior and The Fighter. Each of those films hit hard (pun intended) and were both tragic and inspirational. The latest in a line of sibling-boxing-sports-dramas is director Max Winkler’s Jungleland and while it may not be as memorable as the films I previously mentioned, it still leaves an impact.

Charlie Hunnam and Jack O’ Connell are Stanley and Lion, brothers who are not living the easiest of lives. Lion is a boxer and a skilled one at that. Stanley is his trainer/manager. They are also both homeless, moving around and squatting wherever they can. Lion doesn’t love being a fighter, but he sees it as the only way to get himself out of the hole his brother keeps digging for them due to gambling and other bad decisions. An opportunity comes along when a local criminal named Pepper (Jonathan Majors) calls on the brothers to do him a favor.  If they deliver a young woman named Sky (Jessica Barden) to a crime boss, no questions asked, he will get Lion into a fight in San Francisco with a big payout. Stanley has no issues with this arrangement, but Lion has more than a few reservations.

At this point Jungleland becomes more of a road-trip drama and as Lion’s feelings towards Sky grow stronger with each passing day, his relationship with his brother becomes more fragile. The chemistry between the three leads is where the film is at its strongest. Hunnam and O’Connell are both great, but Barden truly shines here.  I loved her in the Netflix series The End of the F***ing World and here she delivers once again.

Jungleland is much less about boxing than it is about the relationship between the characters. O’Connell and Barden both made me feel for the difficult situations that their characters had to endure. However, one of the biggest problems here and why I feel it doesn’t measure up to other films of its’ ilk is that it feels very cliché.  There is a lack of originality that can’t be overlooked. Thankfully, because some of the writing by Theodore Bressman, David Branson Smith and Winkler is so good and the actors bare their souls in their performances, Jungleland comes off as a much better film than it could have been.

By: Marc Ferman