What's the coolest death in "Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book' "? Hmm, this is a hard choice.
Is it . . . the coward who gets chewed to death by the tiger?
Or is it . . . the guy who gets sucked down slowly, every so slowly, into quicksand?
Or maybe . . . the native traitor trapped in a tomb that compresses darkly over him, promising slow extinction by suffocation?
Or, no, no, it's the British officer laden with loot who sinks to the bottom of a pool and looks around in oxygen-starved despair at the skulls of other unfortunate souls, until a giant serpent bites him in the face!
Yeah, that was it. Really cool, that snake chomp in the face.
Or no, maybe it's . . . Walt Disney, up in heaven, choking on his asparagus as he contemplates how violent films bearing his name have become.
Indeed, "Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book,' " the live action film from Disney that opens tomorrow, is surprisingly intense and graphic from the studio noted far and wide (and beloved) for its soft touch. This is not to say that the film is bad (which it isn't); it's merely to alert parents who take small children to the film that the action is intense and vivid with mortal consequences. Those who remember the amiable animated version of the same material -- with the grand old cad George Sanders voicing the elegant, debauched voice of the evil tiger Shere Kahn -- and expect more of the same will be shocked at the "Indiana Jones/Temple of Doom" level of explicitness.
The movie stars the picturesque Jason Scott Lee as Mowgli, feral child of the Indian jungle, raised and counseled by wolves to the law of the pack, grown up into a vision of male beauty so sleek and nourished and dirt-free he could step into a Calvin Klein ad. Hmmm, wouldn't he make the ideal date for Jodie Foster in "Nell"?
Anyway, Mowgli, separated from his father at 5, is not only a studmuffin, but we are given to believe by the movie's somewhat tendentious morality, untainted by corrupt civilization. Still, in the Kipling stories the wolves were wise and vivid creatures and there was a true sense of pack culture and tradition. Somehow this is uncapturable in the literalism of a live action film, so the animals are one major disappointment in the picture; they remain just animals and never find expressive personalities.
The movie soon deserts them, by bringing Mowgli to reacquaint himself with civilization in the form of an elegant British outpost on the edge of the jungle -- and particularly the commanding officer's beautiful daughter Kitty, played by Lena Headley. Forget that this is something Kipling never thought of, and forget the melancholy reality that at no time in the Raj's rule in India could an aristocratic British woman have had an open, romantic relationship with an Indian man, particularly one who wasn't even placed highly in the caste system. Concentrate instead on the movie's silly central section, which plays like a combination of "Greystoke" and "Splash." In this absurd little play within a play, he's rather rapidly re-educated and becomes the palace glamour boy. But Mowgli himself, aside from his beauty, is a disappointment: he turns into a rather stuffy little chap, given to sanctimonious homilies and rigid political correctness.
Soon enough the movie leaves the palace intrigue behind, when a rogue crew of British officers, led by the dastardly Cary Elwes, kidnap Kitty and use her as ransom by which to extort Mowgli (who loves her) into leading them to a lost city and its treasures. Here is where the movie develops into a strong case of Bengali Jones. In its last third, though somewhat oversaturated with violence, the movie at least develops a great momentum, racing from one hair-breadth escape to another, with all those cool deaths strewn about to spice up the curry.
Beautifully mounted and shot, "Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book' " still feels somewhat callow. Its title aside, it never really deals with the issues that the great Kipling raised continually in his distinguished body of work. Far from being a trumpeter of imperialism, as he is remembered, he was a melancholy artist who understood that the principal irony of the "white man's burden" was that it misshaped and violated those at both ends of its equation. (Read that great ironic masterpiece "Gunga Din" if you don't get that.) Such moral complexity has no place in this slick, exciting but rather soulless new film.
'The Jungle Book'
Starring Jason Scott Lee and Cary Elwes
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Released by Walt Disney Pictures
Rated PG
** 1/2