Never Cry Wolf (1983)

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The caribou herds are in trouble and the government sends scientist Tyler (Charles Martin Smith) to the Canadian north to investigate the damage that the wolves are supposedly doing. He arrives at the end of the rail line in Nootsack and Rosie (Brian Dennehy) flies him out to the frozen north. He is alone with a few human contact like Ootek the Inuit. He is surprised to find the wolves but not the caribou. He soon discovers that the wolves are eating mice and are not the ruthless killing machines of the imagination. This is an adaptation of Farley Mowat's 1963 autobiography. This is a wonderful meditative movie of a man in the wilderness. It teaches a few things about wolves and the north. Smith's constant narration gives a hypnotic feel to the simple performance. It doesn't play up the survival aspect which these movies tend to be. I also love that Ootek keeps saying that Tyler has "Good Idea". Ootek and his friend Mike are fascinating characters. It's also great that they are fully flesh-out human beings rather than the noble all-knowing savages. Mike is funny and a complex character. They give Tyler the notion that the wolves are a part of an ecosystem and the caribou rely as much on the wolves as the wolves rely on the caribou. There are a lot of nature shots but none is more impressive than a naked Charles Martin Smith in the middle of a caribou stampede.

This would be a perfect movie to take your ten year old nephew and his friends to. You know, because it is a true story, the hero will have to prevail, yet he is subjected to gross ordeal after ordeal: a terrifying plane ride, having all his belongings unceremoniously dumped on the ice, being given nothing but asparagus to eat for a whole season, being sniffed by wolves, being inundated by mice, eating mice, dunked in ice cold water, drinking wolf-pee tea, getting caught without clothes, moose beer, abandonment...There don't appear to be any special effects. Whatever ones there were were done so well you don't experience them as that. Only once in the caribou scene, did I notice some cinematographic sleight of hand. There was an unexplained total lack of mosquitoes and blackflies.There is very little dialogue, though there is plenty of fish-out-of-water interaction between the hero, Brian Dennehy representing commercial interests, and the old and new Inuit. This where the humour comes.The landscapes and the wolves are, as expected, breathtaking. Our hero looks a little too clean, well muscled, well groomed and freshly clothed, even at the end of the movie, but Disney, after all, had a hand in it. I would not take younger kids to see it because the ending is a little too sad, in the Disney Old Yeller tradition. It is a good movie about pluck, fearlessness and just picking yourself up and carrying on no matter what happens.The message is that predatory wolves actually help caribou populations by culling the sickest and weakest animals. Poachers do the exact opposite. Though they don't say it, the same applies to cod and seals.

Carroll Ballard's 1983 film "Never Cry Wolf" is, in a nutshell, sort of like a small-scale prototype to the 1990 epic "Dances With Wolves" and also like a tribute to the grand visionary visual-packed classics like "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) and "The Ten Commandments" (1956). At the same time, it is a truly splendid and unique if uneven survival story. "Never Cry Wolf" is a flawed film, but it works on a fundamental level on the fact that it has an allegorical message instilled into its story and personified through its seldom off-camera protagonist."Never Cry Wolf" is based on an autobiography written by Farley Mowat, a Canadian researcher who was sent to the mountains in the 20th century by the government, who wanted to hear back from him that the wolf population was responsible for the quickly disappearing caribou. He is played by Charles Martin Smith as a preliminarily timid, vulnerable pessimist who is quickly regretting his decision to venture out into the wilderness alone. Once marooned, he struggles to survive and all the while, growing more and more isolated and attached to the land around him and all former aspects of his life seem like another world gone by and not worthy of returning to.The element of "Never Cry Wolf" that really works, at least for me, is the allegorical subject matter of the destruction of the once majestic North American continent by what many like to call "civilization" and "progress" and how easily a person can realize this once committed to understanding and experiencing the old world that's continually dying away. Charles Martin Smith plays a somewhat underdeveloped protagonist who begins his quest completely alone and afraid and vulnerable and as time goes by becomes tougher, stronger in his emotions and his courage, and begins to alienate himself from the people he once associated himself with. What's also genuinely interesting is the relationship he has with the wolves he was dispatched to study and condemn as culprits. Though it's no surprise, Smith does indeed come to admire a particular family of wolves who are not the stereotypical bloodthirsty mongers seeking fresh meat and the thrill of a hunt. By contrast, the wolves are represented as their true nature: curious, humble, courageous, and maternal. Smith does not have as much chemistry with the wolves as say Kevin Costner did in "Dances With Wolves" (1990), but the relationship is still interesting.If there are any flaws to the film, they do relate to the characters. There is hardly any dialogue at all in the film and like with "Dances With Wolves", most of the dialogue that does exist is through a voice-over by Smith. The flaw, I felt, was that there was not enough emotion or personality expressed by Smith to make him a sympathetic or relatable character. Brian Dennehy, who personifies the evil of mankind (big surprise) is also kind of underdeveloped and without much of a story to give him a particular air of menace. The major weak point really was the character played by Samson Jorah, who did not hold interest for a moment.In the end, I feel that "Never Cry Wolf" is more of a fleshed-out documentary on the wilderness with a hint for something greater than a visionary epic. This does not mean, however, that it's a bad film. Despite the flaws that were to be found, I did embrace the film as a mildly entertaining pleasure. If I chose to view it again, I wouldn't be going in looking for anything great, but I wouldn't mind the experience either.

I've only seen "Never Cry Wolf" once, during its original theatrical run. I was eight years old then and was completely bored by this film. I have a feeling that I would love it now for all of the reasons that I hated it then.Those reasons are the fact that it takes place in the Alaskan wilderness and is full of stunning visuals of the terrain and wildlife. And, it's a movie told largely without dialogue and spends large parts of its running time with one lone character. I'm fascinated by movies like that now, and so think it's worth giving "Never Cry Wolf" another try.Grade: B+