A Cry in the Wild

I came away from this movie with the feeling that it could have been so much better. Instead of what should be a gripping, tense story of a boy's fight for survival in the wilderness, it comes off as a National Geographic documentary meets Columbia sportswear ad.

The film begins with Brian (Jared Rushton) preparing for a journey by plane to see his father. His mother fortuitously gives him the curious choice of a hatchet as a going-away gift (what's wrong with a Rubik's Cube?), little knowing how badly he will soon need it. Once in the air, the plane's pilot (a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo by Ned Beatty) suffers a fatal heart attack, leaving Brian helpless as the plane crashes into a lake. Extremely lucky to walk (or rather swim) away virtually unscathed, Brian must find shelter, food and hope for rescue.

Here is where the main problem with the movie begins. By the very nature of Brian's solitude, Jared has very few lines to speak, and so the film ought to have compensated by ratcheting up the tension of each scene. Instead, he is shown walking around, sitting around, and so on, with only a minimal sense of danger. As a result, too much reliance is placed on flashbacks to the parents' troubled marriage as the source of tension. These scenes merely get in the way and don't particularly add much to the story. Even worse, occasionally Jared – his face covered with mud - lets out a primal scream or two, which conjures up unfortunate parallels to `Predator.' Speaking of unfortunate, we could have done with being spared the sight of his mullet, but it presumably helped keep him warm at night.

Another disappointment is Pamela Sue Martin in a totally ineffectual performance as the mother. Both she and the father have very little impact in the movie. For instance, we are never shown how they react to news of Brian's disappearance, how they might be organizing rescue attempts, and so on. This is just one source of tension the film-makers would have done well to explore instead of spending so much time on events that happened before Brian embarked on his journey.

I had never read Gary Paulsen's novel, Hatchet, for which 'A Cry in the Wild' is the adaptation of, so I can't make any comparisons to the book. I will, however, say that as a film on its own, adaptation or no adaptation, it was an underdeveloped adventure that provides no major explanation of its few characters.

Think of 'A Cry in the Wild' as a less luxurious, teenage mountaineer (was Quincy, California the only place this was filmed?) version of 'Cast Away.' Jared Rushton is 13-year-old Brian Roebson, a kid headed on a small plane to visit his father, until the craft crashes over some deserted mountain terrain, leaving the kid stranded for quite a while and having to defend himself.

There are basically three parts to the film. The obvious being the ten or fifteen minute introduction of the characters, namely Brian and his mom.

The next third of the movie (which really consumes nearly all of the film) is that of Brian "roughing it." These scenes contain no particularly amazing action, nothing spectacular other than lots of beautiful cinematography of a beautiful Yukon landscape. Nothing to put you on edge, no real encounters (except a brisk confrontation with a cub), and no major dilemmas to initiate some sort of enjoyment or connection with the character on the screen. You might even feel briefly bored with the passage of time as we witness Brian dealing with his situation through first, primitive means, and then more improved ones (using tools, etc) for his survival. It is more like the ordinary time that passes if you were actually stuck in the situation, and that is pretty much about it. In other words, they put no meat on the Paulsen's words when they translated them into a visual media.

And, of course, the third part of the movie is his rescue.

There is a subplot that continuously seeks to make itself known during this time, however. Some conflict between Brian and his parents that created a rocky, awkward relationship between them. However, for the most part, it is only explained in brief, intermittent, minimal dialog flashbacks that look more like a back story for a music video. Any minute, the singer from Jefferson Starship, should chime in an start singing 'Sara.' Other than what the viewer can draw from the implications, or guess for his own need to fill the gaps in the narrative, we get a very underdeveloped back story which was probably necessary to enjoy at least part of this film and create a connection to the characters, whether or not it really had anything to do with Brian's survival adventure in the third part of the movie. These are the flaws in the narrative that through the viewer into a stupor as he struggles to find out what the heck those people there on the screen are doing and, for me, almost done to the point of screaming at the television to say something and tell me more!

It certainly was not, for me, a good adventure tale. But, for fans of Jared Rushton, it was one of the last few movies he made. So, watch it purely for nostalgia, if nothing else.

This movie is the adaptation of Gary Paulsen's "Hatchet". It is a good representation of the movie, and very hard to find. It is good to have in school libraries, as "Hatchet" and other Paulsen books are so popular. While the cover may be misleading to those who want an "action" movie, the film is faithful to the book, which is on a middle-school, junior-high reading level. The acting is good. The outdoor scenes are great. The landscapes and weather conditions that contribute to the book's success are easily the best part of the movie. Brian, a child of a broken home, is sent to visit the father, but is involved in a plane crash when the pilot has a heart attack. Brian is stranded in the frozen wilderness for 52 days.

This movie is a moderate budget television adaption of the critically acclaimed novel "Hatchet" written by the American author of young adult literature Gary James Paulsen. The short novel published in 1987 tells the story of a young teenager who has to survive for several weeks in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash.

The main challenge of this eight-two minutes long movie from 1990 was the fact that the whole story is carried by the main character alone. Most of the novel and the movie takes place in the wilderness and features no dialogues but some soliloquies. Child actor Jared Rushton did an accurate job even though I disliked the fact that a sixteen-year old teenager played the role of an unexperienced thirteen-year old boy.

Despite the solid acting, this movie sometimes feels like a National Geographic documentary that shows us incredible landscapes such as forests, lakes, mountains and waterfalls and a multitude of animals such as bears, porcupines, raccoons and wolves. This is definitely beautiful to watch but gets quickly boring.

Due to the low budget, some scenes feel a little bit goofy. One can clearly see that the wild animals are trained and tame. The fighting scene between the main character and a bear in a lake even made me unintentionally chuckle.

On the other side, a couple of scenes of this movie are actually filled with tension. Where the book sometimes gets too descriptive, the movie has a faster pace and the solid soundtrack helps up building some atmosphere. The sequence where dream and reality mix as the main character encounters a lone wolf is very well done and my favourite part of the film along with the campfire fighting scene. A few mildly shocking scenes in form of the eating of worms or the appearance of the pilot's ugly cadaver in the plane wreck added some spice as well.

A few elements in the movie are different from the book. Some new ideas such as the covering with mud to protect from mosquitoes work very well. On the other side, the flashback scenes are a little bit redundant. The alibi side story around the divorce of the main character's parents is rather uninteresting in the novel and in the movie as well from my point of view.

In the end, this short movie was quite entertaining and is worth to be watched once if you liked the book and the survival genre in general. Especially younger audiences should like this movie even though nothing beats the classic Enid Blyton movies of my childhood. Adults should rather go for survival movies like "The Grey".

When I first heard this movie was being made, I knew I had to see it. I had read the book many many times. The only thing I was worried about was, along with any other movie, that it didn't follow the book. Well, we were in luck as the writer for the movie was none other than Gary Paulson, author of the book Hatchet, for which the movie was based. So by that I knew that the movie was going to go right along with the book, and I was right. The boy who played Brian did an awesome job, as he portrayed fear and loneliness well. It looked like he was actually experiencing the fear and terror of being alone in the Canadian woods. And covering himself with mud to stop the bugs from eating him alive was great to put in there. Thats real life put into a movie. Anybody that hasn't seen this movie should see it. It was wonderfully made and worldly liked.