The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag

I was super excited to see that such a film exists, also found good actors were part of it. However, after watching it for some time, I was terribly disheartened. The facts portrayed here are incomplete and in some cases wrong. Also, the movie is poorly made, sequences are wrong. This can spread such a false impression of the arduous hurdle that Jim Corbett fought. I understand bringing in the content about his personal life, but not at the cost of true events and facts. Extremely disappointed, not only as an ardent Corbett fan but as an movie/documentary watcher.

The fascinating life and adventures of Jim Corbett, and this harrowing tale of a man-eating leopard (shockingly...) are done a great disservice by the BBC. Cutting this story down to fifty minutes forced the screenwriters to jam what could have been a great full feature dramatization into a what feels like one of those gimmicky three-minute novels banged out on a Times Square sidewalk by a guy with a clackity old typewriter and a brilliant command of adjectives. In other words, it showed flashes of potential that made you want it to be more fully fleshed out.

Not that the Beeb is the only one to blame; where the screenwriters can't be blamed for the short run-time, they must take accountability for writing dialogue that ranges from merely cheesy to downright laughable, especially in scenes involving Corbett and the village wise man, and Corbett and Jean Ibbotson.

Jason Flemyng did his best to capture Corbett's ambivalence toward his calling. Jodhi May, while likely miscast in this role playing a middle-aged woman, demonstrated why she was miscast--she's one of the best out there at portraying the strength it takes to hold back.

This is nothing more than an insult to the memory of a great man and his legend. Not factual, charachters have no depth, feels like the entire crew knew it was bogus so they never bothered ti invest themselves in this fake story and it served them right. Waste of time, its a shameless ploy to earn a few coins based on the emotions of true fans and it fails moserably. It falls so hard on its face that its face resembles the face of a man eater victim.

This is a truly awful (mal)adaptation of what is instead an incredibly fascinating and complex real story at the beginning of the 20th century. The facts are put out of context and twisted beyond belief, the characters are completely out of line with the real people they pretend to refer to, the acting is abysmal, the storyline false and tacky, and whoever was involved in this very clearly never read a line of Corbett's books. This cheap and disgusting production is the ultimate insult to the memory of Jim Corbett, a man of incredibly high integrity, courage, and commitment. It is an insult to the people of Kumaon and the Ibbotsons. It is ultimately an insult to the viewer and whoever enjoyed Corbett's tales. I give it 0 out of 10 and would sack the whole production team on the spot. Shame on them.

It is one of the well documented stories ever written on the subject by the author and the hunter Jim Corbett who went after the man eating leopard of Rudraprayag in the year 1925-26. He was accompanied by the Commissioner of Kumaon, Sir William Ibbotson. Both men worked so hard, day and night following this animal, which according to the documents, killed 125 people. Corbett was a 50 year old bachelor, very much in control, a tall (just over 6 feet)seasoned hunter and sporting his trademark mustache during this period, while Ibbotson was short (about 5'6"), clean-shaven and married to Jean.

In the film, the BBC twisted the story so far from reality and painted Corbett as a young arrogant foulmouthed punk, assaulting Ibbotson and developing a romantic interest with Jean Ibbotson. In reality, Corbett spent his nights chasing the leopard and never had any affair with Jean. In the film he is in bed with Jean Ibbotson, neglecting the leopard hunt. It also shows the pundit (played by veteran actor Roshan Seth) was killed by the leopard. Here the BBC made a plastic dummy of the Pundit, and it sure looked like a cheap plastic dummy painted with red stripes. In reality the Pundit was never killed by the leopard. Also in the film Corbett was portrayed as very edgy, bad tempered, foulmouthed and points his rifle to nearly everyone. It was not at all like that in reality. The film is riddled with horrible mistakes after mistakes. One viewer said that instead of tying up a goat as a bait to attract the leopard, they should have tied up the writer, director and producer to save the story.

In my opinion, it is the most awful 45 minute film ever produced by BBC and they had the guts to label it as a true story while their film is nothing but a fictitious account of incidents that never took place.

It is evident that this film was made with a very low budget with inexperienced producer, director and writer - none of them appears to have read the original account, the book titled The Man eating Leopard of Rudraprayag by Jim Corbett.