If you’ve been hooked on BBC’s SAS: Rogue Heroes, perhaps you might want to know that there’s a film starring Jack O’Connell – as well as Charlie Hunnam – that is currently amongst the top watched on Netflix. It’s called Jungleland and you can check out the trailer here.
The film was released back in 2019 and stars the two British stars as well as Jessica Barden, Jonathan Majors, John Cullum, and Nick Mullen.
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Directed by Max Winkler, the film tells the story of two brothers who are also participants in the underground bare-knuckle boxing world.
Hunnam stars as a former prisoner who manages his ex-pro fighter brother Lion, played by O’Connell.
By day, the two struggle to make ends meet, working crappy jobs that they hate, but by night they travel around to get stuck into shady boxing bouts.
The plot sees them forced to take a girl on a road trip to Reno in order to fight at the behest of a gangster that they owe money to.
At least it gives Charlie Hunnam an excuse to do his strange American/English accent again.
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The film is named after the Bruce Springsteen song from his album Born to Run, and currently has a 74 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which ain’t so bad when you think about it.
Sure, it's hardly 100 percent 'fresh' but it ain't exactly zero percent 'fresh' either - and there are films in both of those categories.
It’s also currently amongst the top watched films on Netflix at the minute, having been added very recently.
At the minute it sits ninth in the overall chart, and at a run-time of around 90 minutes, it seems as if people have been willing to take a chance and haven't been disappointed with what they've seen.
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The streaming platform describes the film thusly: “When a boxer and his manager brother owe a debt, they are forced to travel cross-country with a passenger and enter a vicious bare-knuckle tournament.”
That’s pretty much what we said before, so you’ll probably get the picture by now.
Critics were quite keen on the movie, citing stirring performances from the main cast, as well as strong directing from Winkler.
Indiewire wrote: "As raw and engaging as the disconnect between Stanley and Lion becomes as they tumble toward California, the real tension of Jungleland lives in the ever-constricting space between its three main characters and the respective clichés."
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RogerEbert.com said: “Featuring three very strong central performances and eye-catching poetic visuals, Jungleland is more of a mood-piece than anything else, and on that level it works beautifully.”
The Playlist warned: "Max Winkler's Jungleland is a confidently crafted three-hander and your enjoyment of it will depend entirely on how many times you can watch its protagonists f*** up."
Anyway, if that sounds like your sort of thing, you can watch Jungleland on Netflix now.
Topics: TV and Film, Celebrity, Netflix
Tom Wood