Thierry Heigold 26.01.2015A cry in the Wild: movie critiqueThe movie "A Cry in the Wild", directed by Mark Griffith is a movie adaptation of the novel Hatchet with some variation. The main plot is that Jared Rushton (playing Brian) crashes in a lake in the Canadian wilderness after his pilot suffers from a heart attack, that kills him leaving Brian alone in the unattended plane. Brian survives the crash and lives through the dangers of nature until he gets rescued from a plane that has picked up his emergency message he sends with the help of the radio transmitter he finds in the emergency box that he rescues from the plane after it get's brought up by a tornado.I like the fact that Brian learns to find grubs by watching the bear. This is realistic and shows that Brian only survives by using common sense, especially because you see that Brian loses a lot when his actions aren't based on common sense. Also the meeting with the wolf is very realistic as well. Also, the fact that he talks with the gut cherries and imaginary people, show the influence of loneliness on on the behavior of the human. Also from what you can see in the movie Brian knows one thing or the other about surviving, which you can clearly see when he smears his face in mud as protection, or when he scares of the bear with fire, and still he isn't an expert which becomes clear while he builds the fire ore when he meets with the bear.Mark Griffith still missed some things, some of these things are that he takes a lot of times to build the shelter which makes him look like a total amateur, even though some other things show greater knowledge about survival. Another thing I dislike about the movie is that a lot of scenes are unrealistic for example the way the 2nd fight with the bear ends and that he finds the bear cubs on the next day. Also, I think that it would have made more sense to build the spear (which was much more elaborate than described in the Book) before the Bow and Arrows and I would think that Brian would have better things to do then keep exact count of his food supplies and that he would use the plane piece he finds for it. Also I would have shown more of the fool bird hunt then the first kill of one. What I really dislike is that Mark Griffith squeezed everything into such a short time as well as well as the fact that Brian is pretty careless when he unpacks the emergency box, which I don't like because I think that after all he's been through he would treasure every thing in the box.In my personal opinion the movie deserves 5 Stars of 10. My suggestion to making it better would be make a little more breathing Space and make unrealistic scenes more realistic.

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".

Bad Stuff: This movie is real crap. Bad stunts for one thing, they looked so fake I thought this was "The Twilight Zone". The flashbacks are pretty much useless. One part of the movie he thinks taking his anger out on a window will make his life better. I wanna know the casting director and if he was high because the acting, even from the adults was horrid. A kissing scene in this movie even sucked. This movie killed the book. The book was great. I highly do not recommend this movie. Not even for educational purposes. Good Stuff: I don't know what I can say really. There is some suspense parts that get you going, but they are quickly shot down by the bad stunt work and acting. My Verdict: Do not watch.

In my Lit. class we've just finished the book, Hatchet, and this movie is nothing like the book. (1) Brian never ate worms in the book. (2) He didn't know the pilot's name. (3) His mom was cheating on his father in a station wagon not in the woods where anyone could see. (4) The man the mother is cheating with doesn't have black hair, he has blonde. Now for the unrealistic parts of the movie: (1) A thirteen year old can't punch his fist through a window in one punch. And for the acting, the kid who played Brian was a horrible actor. However, I do believe that the scenery was impressive, though I highly doubt the director even read the book.This movie is good if you have not read the book Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, but if you have, then begin a complaint letter to the director.