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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 sat through this entire film despite the fact that I thought it was really bad from start to finish. I was wondering how many more clichés they could cram into this turkey.

The flashbacks were bad, the acting was bad, the set pieces were thrown together badly. We had no idea if anybody was even looking for this kid once he crashed. As soon as the plane crashed I kept saying I hope he's gonna go back and get the survival stuff from the plane, but it's not until the end of the movie when for some unknown reason the plane floats to the surface of the lake, that he finally gets the kit (?)

as for the "fight" with the bear...pulease!!!

I guess the movie is aimed at young ones and that's about the only group that will see anything good in this film.

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".

The first time I saw this movie was when I was I think 4 and loved it.The second time I saw this film i saw the beginning of it in the fifth grade.

Finally at the age of thirteen I caught it on Showtime. It all in all is a good movie I like the realistic survival aspects of the movie. It had very good acting and gave the book it was based on justice. Since I liked it so much I think I will Buy it at Christmas. Jared Rushton gives a good performance in it and so does Ned Betty. I think the movie could have told more about the mother and father's story though. I would not recommend the sequels,because they were kind of cheap and pointless, and piggybacked the first one. so just see the first one and not the cheap sequels.

The book is always better, let's face it. Hatchet is no exception, why the name A Cry in the Wild? Just seems odd. The casting of Brian was bad. In the book Brian was young but smart. In the movie he's just the goof ball neighbor kid from Honey I shrunk the kids. I now know why this movie is difficult to find and relatively unknown. It isn't bad, as a movie. A but rushed and bland mostly. Stick with the book. Hopefully they can make a better attempt someday. Also he says "I am Brian Robenson" and the end, yes he screwed up the last name of his character Brian Robeson!