Bold Native

At a recent screening I attended,the director of Bold Native described it as "a movie of ideas" and I give this film a lot of credit for addressing some of the moral complexity of the animal rights issue rather than just being a simple polemic. It doesn't demonize or romanticize either side too much.

There is a lot of heart in Bold Native. It's fast-paced, colorful, youthful and fun while underscoring the urgency of helping animals during a time when non-violent animal liberators are being prosecuted as domestic terrorists. Bold Native reminds the viewer that Animal Rights is a human rights issue, too. See this movie!

You don't need to be an animal rights activist to find the movie cinematically enjoyable. Before I saw the movie, I expected the movie to be a slightly diluted advocacy "message" film. I was wrong. This movie way surpassed my expectations. The film is imaginatively well-written (and doesn't pummel you with agenda messages), well-acted with interesting characters (and not living scenery), dramatic, and has surprising elements. The casting was also superb.

While a couple reviews here find the sex/nudity scenes to be not needed, I actually, and surprisingly to myself (who normally would agree that this is the case in many movies), have to disagree. Without those scenes, it would take a lot of umph out of one of following powerful elements in the story.

This movie also gives a person a good crash course on current politics and government as it especially relates to the animal rights movement. Something that most people are ignorant of, and will likely find pretty shocking.

As the devoted father of a budding animal rights activist who is soon leaving for college, I am spending a few days at an animal rights conference to enjoy a few days with her before she goes to college and dyes her hair blue.

On the first night of the conference, I saw this movie surrounded by "the choir" I expected this movie to be "preaching" to. I didn't expect much from the movie itself. I was prepared to sit through a "labor of love" that was going to club me senseless with a heavy-handed agenda.

What I got instead was a well-written, well-acted, dramatic and surprising movie that often moved me to tears. The characters were all believable, and I didn't notice any of the distracting low-budget gaffes that plague so many movies like this one.

If I have any complaint, it was the non-linear sequence of the movie. I didn't figure out why he was orchestrating the climax until the movie itself pointed out the timeline and his motivation. I found myself confused, at times, about past and present.

I was already sympathetic to the message, but this movie has pushed me closer to accepting the challenge of living a vegan lifestyle. I think this movie has the power to change people in ways that horrifying documentary footage can't, because you are drawn into the struggle, instead of just being repelled by the reality of animal cruelty.

I definitely recommend this movie to anyone who loves animals, regardless of how their lifestyle or ideology.

Oh, and that pig was cute!

The film is a brilliant mesh of dramatic stay-on-the-edge-of-your-seat storyline with important documentary footage about the horrors suffered by animals of factory farms. The film is so high quality -- artful direction, skillful acting, compelling plot, beautiful cinematography and critical and pointed delivery of the message on behalf of the deplorable state of farm animals. I hope it reaches wide delivery.

The movie is so realistic that for the first several minutes I thought it was a documentary until I recognized the intense actor who plays the father. The dynamic of conflict between the son and the father is at the core of the story. However, the true heart of the movie is the plight of farm animals and the risks that activists take when they fight to improve the lives of those animals. The documentary footage is painful to watch, but it brings home the moral fiber of the message.

Highest recommendation!

Bold Native offers a lot for viewers to explore: good characters, intensive dialogue, dramatic editing, and a story line which dives deeply into a subject often seen as too extreme for the general public.

This film will inspire many important conversations, both amongst seasoned activists discussing tactics, ethics and methods, but more importantly amongst the uninitiated: those who have never considered animal cruelty as being something related to our food and lifestyle choices.

This has been a good year for films involving compassion towards animals, with the success of The Cove driving people towards thinking about animal cruelty in ways they might not have before. Still, people in the USA can watch that movie from afar in a way, thinking all throughout that animal cruelty is something which happens "over there" and not in close proximity to the comforts and norms of our own day to day lives.

What Bold Native does is to make the issue of animal cruelty immediate and engaging, by offering us a narrative about characters that are relatable and likable, in a story line that is believable, while at the same time showing throughout genuine footage of actual animal barbarism that isn't an overbearing onslaught like a propaganda video. Instead this intense footage is used sparingly and tastefully amidst the narrative, shocking to those who might be unaware of what is truly going on behind the food and clothing industries, and horrifying enough to hammer home the point that animal cruelty is happening all around us, everyday. The film poses a challenge to us: that if what we see is abhorrent and if we feel compelled to respond, that it is up to us to engage the issue directly, in whatever capacity we deem appropriate.

This is an undeniably challenging film.