Overrated and overhyped

Fantastic!

Best movie ever!

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

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.

A masterpiece film. Seemingly simultaneous portrayal of first and third person views of one person's accidental wilderness schooling. It is far from an accurate film version of the book, but an excellent film it is. It will move you. It is the only film I have ever seen that can somehow show the feeling one gets from wilderness solace. Carroll Ballard is so good at selecting the scenes and how to tell a story. The movie is not filled with dialog which would seem to me to be an obstacle to telling a story, but Carroll Ballard uses it as a tool. An example is a scene with light bulbs on a crate and the main character in the background. The focus is on the bulbs, but the real story is the character behind them. Very well done. I do not care for "group hug" movies and usually detest a director's attempt to "teach me a lesson" about life or to try to bring about emotion. This movie will inspire but does so without a good guy/bad guy plot, hero/heroin, shock scenes, eye candy getting rescued, or even a complicated plot, etc. Great acting and directing. Just a very well made movie that doesn't have to use the typical shock value, tear jerking, "tricks of the trade" so many other filmmakers have to rely on.

Never Cry Wolf begins with a quiet sense of loneliness, a series of images. From place to place, you feel your eyes wander to the things you see around you. There's no big surprise, no big action sequence or dramatic turn of events. Only a slow realization, like with Tyler, of just what you're getting yourself into. His voice fades into the mix, if only to let you wander in on his thoughts. He has no grand statement to make. Only questions and hopes.One of, if not the first thing that you notice is the music of Mark Isham. Perhaps driven by youthful bravado (this was his first film score), Isham eschews any traditional dramatic production. Instead, he goes for an alternating mix between wavering uncertainty and pounding passion. His soundtrack over the title sequence plays like some proposed music designed to remind one of the craters and the mountains of the moon. A beautiful and terrifying sense of the alien, of the unknown. The music is as much a part of the soundtrack as the animals and dialogue. Indeed, at one point, it plays duet to Tyler's oboe.Rather than having a heroic and dashing explorer (who must not only find himself in the wilderness, but also lose the old version of himself), Tyler is a quiet man who has no current self-awareness to lose. In the end, this makes Charles Martin Smith essential to the role. It is Tyler's personality, his confusion, his social status, and his emotional state that can only be played quietly. As a character, Tyler has no grand statements to make, only visions and revelations of truth. Internal and otherwise. Smith plays him perfectly. Not long after the introductory scenes, Tyler finds a pilot who can take him to where he needs to be. Rosie (played by Brian Dennehy) doesn't seem exactly stable, but it's likely his only option. Dennehy plays the role with his usual crazy-eyed gruffness, yet without some of his usual sideways winks at the audience. The other two main roles in the film - Inuit natives played by Samson Jorah and Zachary Ittimangnaq - are even more understated personalities than Tyler. The depth of their specific acting talents (if acting is took to mean acting unnaturally) could be up for interpretation. But, instead of giving them actions and dialogue beyond their range of experience, they simply live their respective characters' lives for the screen. Ootek and Mike don't have wide character arcs like Tyler does. They are already in their natural environment, and no longer experience the initial resistance and friction that Tyler is becoming familiar with. Ootek goes off into the wilderness to live in the silence, but Tyler is only just learning to silence his thoughts.And it is in those thoughts that we are given a window into Tyler's development. Any change in perception or understanding that might seem either too personal or too inconsequential to share in a conversation, we are given privy to through Charles Martin Smith's narration. Farley Mowat's writing is the core of Never Cry Wolf. He writes from a humorous standpoint, as concerned with the great fears and mysteries of life as he is with those things that mildly amuse him. Each sequence is given the full weight of feeling and realism, because they all hold equal - yet utterly different - strengths and beauties. The weight of this reality comes into a nude scene which occurs later in the film. It does a rare thing in cinema - to explore the beauty of humanity in nature. Pure and unrestrained.Hiro Narita does amazing work as the cinematographer, also doing his first feature film work like composer Isham. As a photographer myself, I am in awe of his ability to make the otherwise ordinary truly stunning. In quiet passages, it is his skill capturing the little corners of Tyler's life that move things forward. In a film with such truly beautiful cinematography, it would be nearly impossible to criticize any lack of judicial editing. Any extra running time would simply be more time to admire Narita's work. But without the direction of Carroll Ballard, I have doubts that Never Cry Wolf could have been such a pure success that it is. Other films such as this have gone down well-traveled and over-used structures of the so-called 'wilderness movie' - all of which Never Cry Wolf steers clear from. There's no unrealistic animal behavior for the sense of 'cuteness', and no comic relief that isn't arrived upon naturally. Also, there is careful avoidance of the old 'Magic Indian' cliché so common in films which depict native cultures. Spirituality is a large factor in the life of the Inuit shown here, but they do not have the ability to appear and disappear at will, or to bend the space-time continuum. This is a bizarre characteristic of nearly all films about the native population that is thankfully not repeated.The commitment to truth and understanding of the relationship between nature and human nature in Never Cry Wolf is what makes it one of the truly great films of all time. It shows what can happen when all is given to a single goal, when a great director finds the perfect cinematographer, composer, and lead actor for a film, and leads them through the process of making a motion picture. This is what cinema is all about.Also Recommended -Days of Heaven (1978), The Black Stallion (1979), Vigil (1984), The Snow Walker (2003)

Pretty good nature flick with newfound sympathy for wild wolves, which were eradicated from the western United States by the 1930s by government hunters in favor of the livestock industry.The good news is that wild wolves were replanted into wilderness areas in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming in the 1990s and have spread to surrounding states.The newbie scientist in Never Cry Wolf learns in the field what they didn't teach him in class---you cannot conduct an experiment without affecting the outcome of the experiment.Watch this film and gain a new appreciation for the value of a pretty smile.