In Like Flynn, based on the novel by Errol Flynn - Eight out of 10

In Like Flynn, based on the novel by Errol Flynn

Eight out of 10

If the stories on which the motion picture is based are true, then the life of the main character was indeed sensational and the film that tells part of it has some incredible scenes.

In the very first few minutes, the audience is overwhelmed by what takes place in Papua New Guinea, where the hero, Errol Flynn - portrayed with skill, audacity, panache by Thomas Cocquerel – is paid to guide a party through the jungle.

They are filming their advance through enemy territory and what happens seems to be extracted from the most imaginative Indian Jones type of movies, although there could be a way to tell if it is confabulation or the truth.

As they walk into hostile territory, skulls appear, some in a state of putrefaction, horrible to look at, while others are “fresh”, still bleeding, together with other human body parts – a severed hand is bleeding and hanging from a tree.

Gold diggers had been here before this party of explorers and the native tribes had not liked that at all, in fact, the opposite is true to such extent that they have used their abilities to kill the trespassers.

Errol Flynn explains that taking the gold out from the island is seen by the local tribes as the ultimate offense, something like bleeding the body of a being dry – maybe he mentioned something concerning their religious beliefs too.

In one incredible scene after another, one of the members of the party is terrified by what he sees and he is one nanosecond from falling in a ravine where the trap we know from other films is set.

At this moment, it reminds me of Papillon – the original, with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman not the more recent, allegedly inferior, recent version – where, like in so many other features of its kind, terrible surprises await intruders into native territory, South America in this case.

Errol Flynn, like the cinematic protagonists he would later have the chance to play, acts with lightning speed and catches the hand of the man who is about to die, just before he falls on wooden spears.

Furthermore, the already aghast men walk into a clearing, where more horrifying skulls and images appear, and in the middle the corpse of the prospector that had been there before.

Only minutes before actually, he had been still alive, for his dead body, without hands – one of them may have been suspended to that tree they walked past – is still warm and this means the enemy is near.

Indeed, a group of what we would have called savages – in the bad old days of political incorrectness and insensitivity – and now we need to address with an appropriate name – locals defending their land approaches.

They have what could well be the colors of war painted on their faces, for they make their intentions clear within seconds, as they start throwing spears and shoot arrows at the people who seem to have no chance.

Some of them die and others are wounded – I think it was the one whom the hero had just saved who is again in trouble, shot by an arrow and Flynn is there again to give a saving hand.

In fact, he runs with this wounded black man on his back – like the protagonist of Hacksaw Ridge, where we have another character inspired by real life events, a real Super Hero – and they nearly make it.

With a determined warring tribe on their footsteps, they will surely not make it, we might think, especially when we add into the mix some crocodiles, which attack and kill one of those who made it near the boat.

Indeed, Errol Flynn lives to tell this and other miraculous stories, but the one he had save d twice is not so lucky the third time, when a crocodile – or more – put an end to a life that was short.

Fascinating debut, which took only less than ten minutes of screen time, indicative of a life that was more than full, lived with a rare intensity, depicting a figure that was intriguing, extraordinary, mesmerizing, unlike so many of the stars that walked into his footsteps – most of them have been and are spoiled, arrogant, irrelevant fakes, revealed in Adventures in the Screen Trade by the wonderful, late William Goldman, a book that shows you the exaggerations of celebrities like Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Al Pacino and others.

The expression In Like Flynn, which is used for the motion picture refers to the fact that Errol Flynn was so close to the fictional Super Heroes of films, an actor whose life has included fantastic adventures – like the ones presented in the first few minutes – opium smuggling, Gambling, street and indoor boxing and fighting, womanizing, sailing and so much more.