The Legend of Tarzan: Complicated legend

Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent,  Christoph Waltz

Rated: 5/10

This one from Warner Brothers is a different take on the legend of Tarzan wherein Hollywood’s most loved jungle boy (Alexander Skarsgård) is a Lord of British Parliament, a much married and well-heeled Englishman being smothered by urbanity and concrete in his stone castle before being yanked into the sinister jungles of Congo Africa where a devious man is busy enslaving a population and building an Army for power and diamonds.

Phew! That’s quite a new take on the rope-swinging apeman of yore, but still not interesting enough to make you really, really watch. The localing, the landscapes and the aerial shots, combined with the CGIs, the colouring of the canvas and the ambience are mediocre in comparison to what a director of the repute of David Yates (Harry Potter man) could and should have achieved.

The storyline is much too elaborate and tedious and our man Tarzan miscast despite the rippling abs till, well, right down there! He does not look like Tarzan and if even a slight twist had been given to his looks, he would have made a better villain. His love interest, however, is all Jane and happening with a spirit that threatens to enslave even the baddest man in the film.

The tribals, their mores, the fights and the noise are all okay to be with though one feels the film needed more of an alibi that it gets in the story with a Belgian monarch who is never shown, his envoy who is more a mercenary than a diplomat, Tarzan who has a job at hand and a mercenary-turned-American whistle blower who entices him to take the plunge.