The Legend of Tarzan
Director: David Yates
Stars: Alexander Skarsgård, Margot Robbie, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L Jackson
Two stars
It’s been more than 100 years since Edgar Rice Burroughs’s ape-man first appeared in print, during which time he as been portrayed dozens of times on the big screen.
True Blood star Alexander Skarsgård is the latest actor to swing through the jungle, taking the title role in Harry Potter director David Yates's The Legend of Tarzan.
But in the internet-era, when “vine” means something completely different than it did in Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan heyday, you have to ask whether the jungle hero is really what audiences want now. Smartly, the film dispenses with an origin story. There are a few brief flashbacks to Tarzan’s time in the jungle, when he was raised by apes after his parents died, but the real story starts several years later, in Victorian England.
Tarzan is now John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke. He is married to Jane (Margot Robbie) and drinks tea with the prime minister (played by Jim Broadbent), who asks him to return to the Congo at the invitation of Belgium’s King Leopold II.
After much needling from George Washington Williams (Samuel L Jackson), an American who believes the Belgians are enslaving the Congolese, Clayton agrees to go – but soon falls foul of Leopold’s envoy, Captain Léon Rom (Christoph Waltz), who has struck a deal with an African tribal leader (Djimon Hounsou) to hand over Tarzan in exchange for enough diamonds to save his near-bankrupt country.
To be fair to the perfectly sculpted Skarsgård, he truly looks the part and embodies the character’s earthy masculinity and primal heroism. Robbie is good, too, more than just a helpless heroine.
Coming so soon after his villainous turn in the Bond movie Spectre, Waltz is less impressive, bringing little added depth to an admittedly thinly sketched character.
The real problem, however, lies not in the performances, but the production values. It was shot on a studio backlot (stitched together with background images of Gabon in Africa), and so there is an overwhelming sense that this jungle doesn’t feel real.
True, when Skarsgård first arrives on the savannah and reintroduces himself to a lioness, the CGI animals look fantastic. But too often, the digital technology lets the film down.
Maybe it’s churlish to be so harsh about what is, after all, a jungle fantasy. But with such a surfeit CGI, the film is more hollow than heroic.
It leaves you feeling sorry for Skarsgård, after all the dieting and exercise, to be stuck in such a flabby blockbuster.
artslife@thenational.ae
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The specs
Engine: 2.7-litre 4-cylinder Turbomax
Power: 310hp
Torque: 583Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh192,500
On sale: Now
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Florida: The critical Sunshine State
Though mostly conservative, Florida is usually always “close” in presidential elections. In most elections, the candidate that wins the Sunshine State almost always wins the election, as evidenced in 2016 when Trump took Florida, a state which has not had a democratic governor since 1991.
Joe Biden’s campaign has spent $100 million there to turn things around, understandable given the state’s crucial 29 electoral votes.
In 2016, Mr Trump’s democratic rival Hillary Clinton paid frequent visits to Florida though analysts concluded that she failed to appeal towards middle-class voters, whom Barack Obama won over in the previous election.
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Starring: Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Jenny Ortega
Director: Tim Burton
Rating: 3/5
Iran's dirty tricks to dodge sanctions
There’s increased scrutiny on the tricks being used to keep commodities flowing to and from blacklisted countries. Here’s a description of how some work.
1 Going Dark
A common method to transport Iranian oil with stealth is to turn off the Automatic Identification System, an electronic device that pinpoints a ship’s location. Known as going dark, a vessel flicks the switch before berthing and typically reappears days later, masking the location of its load or discharge port.
2. Ship-to-Ship Transfers
A first vessel will take its clandestine cargo away from the country in question before transferring it to a waiting ship, all of this happening out of sight. The vessels will then sail in different directions. For about a third of Iranian exports, more than one tanker typically handles a load before it’s delivered to its final destination, analysts say.
3. Fake Destinations
Signaling the wrong destination to load or unload is another technique. Ships that intend to take cargo from Iran may indicate their loading ports in sanction-free places like Iraq. Ships can keep changing their destinations and end up not berthing at any of them.
4. Rebranded Barrels
Iranian barrels can also be rebranded as oil from a nation free from sanctions such as Iraq. The countries share fields along their border and the crude has similar characteristics. Oil from these deposits can be trucked out to another port and documents forged to hide Iran as the origin.
* Bloomberg
Brief scores:
Manchester United 4
Young 13', Mata 28', Lukaku 42', Rashford 82'
Fulham 1
Kamara 67' (pen),
Red card: Anguissa (68')
Man of the match: Juan Mata (Man Utd)