By Leonard Klady Klady@moviecitynews.com
Rush to Judgment: The Legend Of Tarzan
The things that are wrong, or wrong-headed with the latest incarnation of The Legend of Tarzan, are myriad and numerous. One can readily cite a cumbersome, inelegant and periodically impenetrable storyline. There’s also a reliance on CG effects that distances one from the action and emotion, poorly developed characters, miscasting, typecasting and an infinite number of historic inanities that beggar description.
Nonetheless the lineage of the title hero is so fearsome that one cannot but forgive much of the film’s shortcomings. While not the sort of radical cinematic reinvention affected by Greystoke in 1984 from the seminal Johnny Weissmuller-Maureen O’Sullivan era, it is for good and ill the Tarzan for the current generation of filmgoers.
The story centers on John Clayton (Alexander Skarsgard) aka Tarzan, aka Earl of Greystoke returning to Africa after a decade of a more pampered existence in England. It’s the turn of the century when the Congo was a colony of Leopold II of Belgium.
Our hero is reluctant to accept the king’s invitation and the endorsement of an unidentified British Prime Minister (presumably Gladstone or Salisbury) to view alleged social reforms and modern institutions. However, he has a change of mind following entreaties from American emissary George Washington Williams (Samuel Jackson) to expose the truly unspeakable conditions that are the reality. There’s also the lingering sense that the taciturn Lord may hanker to revisit the wilds of his youth voiced volubly by his bride Jane (Margot Robbie).
The real scenario is that territory administrator Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz) wants to deliver the Ape Man to a tribal leader who has a grudge to settle. In exchange diamonds will be delivered to bail out the bankrupt kingdom.
It’s a rather simplistic bit of early twentieth century geopolitics that proves unnecessary to the screen’s more traditional jungle adventure mode.
The underlying clumsiness of the scenario is that The Legend of Tarzan is structured as a sequel for an iteration that has no origin. Nonetheless it falters in its attempts to insert the backstory via flashback vignettes. They prove to be insufficient and over-stated simultaneously. In the latter case one has to ask: Is there anyone on earth that doesn’t know the bare bones of the Tarzan saga? The one element that might have been worth examining was how he got his name which according to his literary creator means “white skin” in the language of the apes.
All that aside, the century of books, movies and television that have kept this literary icon perpetually popular work to the movie’s advantage. One readily knows the holes that need to be filled in and likely, unintended, it establishes an investment in the movie to its benefit.
It’s a Tarzan movie and what we want is vine swinging, communing with the beasts of the jungle and the vanquishing of evil bipods. In that regard the picture delivers despite the fact that the animals especially feel engineered rather than fur and blood creatures transposed into the action via more primitive bygone special effects. One can simply put aside the obvious and enjoy the heartfelt moment when the jungle lord nestles with lions he’s known since all were cubs or gets into the ring with a gorilla monarch that was a playmate of his youth.
Skarsgard is effective as a mysterious, brooding hero rather than as the traditional naïf. The rest of the cast have higher hurdles to clear; chiefly Robbie whose character is asked to do little more than enthusiasm or Waltz whose bag of nasty tricks has become decidedly familiar. Jackson simply appears out of his time.
The Gabon exteriors are appropriately breathtaking and a lively tonic to the film’s soundstages.
It would be nice to see this set of artists return for another chapter as assuredly they must have learned from their experiences how to do it better. Whether that happens or not, one can be certain that the screen has not seen the last of the Lord of the Apes.