A Cry in the Wild

1990
5.8| 1h22m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 01 June 1990 Released
Producted By: Concorde Pictures
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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13-year-old Brian is the sole survivor of an unreported plane crash. Alone in the Yukon wilderness, Brian must learn to survive by his wits, find food and shelter, and brave wild, hungry animals until or if he is found.

Genre

Drama, Family

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Director

Mark Griffiths

Production Companies

Concorde Pictures

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A Cry in the Wild Audience Reviews

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!
Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
theigold 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.
lfleig-225-514830 Mark Griffith turns the well-known classic "Hatchet' into "A Cry in the Wild" in this fantastic movie adaptation of the book by Gary Paulsen. Brian (Jared Rushton) finds himself stranded in Canada's forests after surviving a plane crash. His only weapon is a hatchet, which he finds useless at first, but then discovers it will save his life. As various adventures chase Brian through fire-making, shelter-building, and food-searching, he discovers skills and abilities he never knew he had before. First, let's begin with the praise. I tip my hat to the actor, Jared Rushton. He really steps into Brian's shoes, showing his emotions and feelings. When Brian arrives in the woods, fresh from the city, he isn't part of nature yet. Jared Rushton makes a very good impression of first hacking at the fish with his hatchet, then falling right in. That shows he hasn't had any experience yet. When the movie's Brian encounters the porcupine, his pain seems fairly realistic. When Brian finds the emergency box at the end, the book says he didn't think he liked the experience of holding the rifle. Jared Rushton acts out that scene quite correctly, first aiming at the "fool birds" on the lake, then lowering the rifle again hesitantly. Continuing with the setting and props: In many ways the background and surroundings seem logical to me. The mountains are similar to the inner that I got while reading. (They were a bit rockier, though!) The materials that Jared Rushton had were all very realistic. The plot of the movie was a little different than "Hatchet". The rough story was the same, which made the viewer clearly see that "A Cry in the Wild" was a relative of "Hatchet". In all, the movie was very enjoyable. Even though many things were done very well, several parts of the movie irritated me. For example, Jared Rushton was stronger than any 13-year-old I've ever met. He wrestled with a full grown bear and survived! Next, his clothes weren't tattered like the book described. But the fact that confused me the most about Brian was how easily he managed to kill the "fool bird". It took him more than 20 tries to catch fish, and then suddenly he's a perfect hunter! There weren't too many things to criticize with the setting and props. What was not that great were tiny facts: Jared Rushton uses porcupine quills for his spear, not a sharpened branch, his shelter is a lot lower than the book described, and he uses hay instead of birch bark for his fire. But there were lots of differences in the plot. The movie starts in the store, not already in the plane. Next, Jared Rushton, doesn't look for food or shelter until at least one day after his arrival. The book describes Brian searching for the necessities right away. Adding to that, Jared Rushton finds the berries before he finds his shelter. That was the opposite in "Hatchet". After that, a raccoon plunders his berry supplies. A raccoon never comes in the book. In a similar way, Mark Griffith adds the fact that Jared Rushton eats maggots and worms. That never happened in Gary Paulsen's idea of the story. Afterwards, the movie's Brian encounters the bear several times, not just once at the berry site. For example, the bear destroys his shelter, but then Jared Rushton kills it. Some time later, the tornado occurs, which brings the plane up. Hatchet ends with Brian meeting the pilot that rescues him, with an epilogue. The most frustrating thing of all in "A Cry in the Wild" is that everything is out of order! The berries get found before the shelter, the bear attacks several times; often it's really confusing to follow the story! All the problems with the plot will definitely interfere with all of the "plus-points"... Last of all, we come to the summary of everything and the grading. The main points of my positive feedback would be that Jared Rushton does a good job playing Brian, the set was well designed and the most important scenes of the book were used. The biggest setbacks of "A Cry in the Wild" included that many props, names for things, or events were changed, often very much, and that most of the parts were mixed up. Out of ten stars, I'm giving this movie 6 stars, as it was enjoyable, but confusing. For ten stars, Mark Griffith could have based "A Cry in the Wild" more on "Hatchet" and made it clearer what happens when. Overall, this was O.K. and I'd recommend it to people who don't like exiting movies. All right, Mr. Griffith!
kluseba 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".
sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** It was just a pain old hatched that his mom June Robason,Pamela Sue Martin, practically forced on him that in the end saved young 13 year old Brain, Jared Ruston, life. You could see that young Brain had his problems at the beginning of the movie in his parents June and Brad Robason, Stephen Meadows, splitting up over an extramarital affair that June had. It was in fact Brian who caught his mom and her boyfriend, Terrence H. Winkless, making out in the woods that had him freak out! That had him go so far, when his dad finally checked out for good, to almost kill himself.Now on a plane trip to the far off Yukon Territory where his dad works at an oil refinery Brian feels that he's getting over the split between his parents. But what's to come is far more serious then him being the son in a one family household. It's that the single engine plane pilot Jack Holcomb, Ned Beatty, who really ended screwing things up for all, him and Brian,involved. Showing off his flying abilities and even forcing Brian,who doesn't have a license, to fly the plane Holcomb in all the excitement suffers a massive heart attack! Thus leaving poor Btrian on his own to both fly and land the aircraft! Miraculously landing the plane in an uncharted lake in the Yukon Brain is now on his own to survive in the vast Canadian wilderness with the now dead as a doornail Holcomb ending up as fish food. It's here where Brain's hatchet comes into play with him using it to start fires, by striking it against a flint rock, as well as build his own tree house and fight off the wild animals in the forest.It was also Brian's hatchet, that he almost lost, that had him break through the half sunken plane fuselage, that submerged from the lake after a storm hit it, that had him get his hands on the survival kit with flares and an electronic sensing device that finally had him rescued. But before that happened Brian had to prove his worth in surviving both bear and wolf attacks as well as him being forced to eat worms and, as he called them, puke berries as well as the cold dark and dangerous nights in the Yukon; Where anything can happen and in Brian's case always did!***SPOILERS*** There was a real happy ending to the movie with Brian not only surviving his unscheduled stop in the wild but his parents, June & Brad, getting back together again. And now, also together with his dog Irving, the once very insecure Brian can start a new life in him knowing that he's got what it takes in making it in the cold hard and unpredictable world that he lives in: Both in civilization as well as in the wild!