Directors: Richard C. Sarafian
Cast: Richard Harris, John Huston, Henry Wilcoxon

Several years ago, when I was working for the non-profit Rick Hansen Foundation, going around British Columbia to assess buildings to see how accessible they were for people with disabilities, I once got an assignment to go to a small and very isolated village called Valemount. The actual work I would have to do regarding my assignment - inspect five buildings in three days and then write full-length reports on each of them - didn't concern me as much as my worry that a place like Valemount would be missing the conveniences and special features of the city I happened to live in. Still, I bit the bullet and I took the long journey to Valemount. To my pleasant surprise, my experience with Valemount was overall not bad at all. The forests and mountains hugging the village were breathtaking and soothing. The laid-back presentation of the village was relaxing and not stressful. Being along a major highway, the village had an A & W and a Subway restaurant, and several other restaurants. There was a drug store and a small supermarket, each with a decent selection of stock. The hotel I stayed in was clean, comfortable, and modern. And the village's small library actually stocked an ample supply of movies on Blu-ray! All these things managed to make my stay in Valemount very comfortable. All the same, there were a few things missing from my ability to feel totally comfortable. The hotel had mediocre breakfast options, and their wi-fi was terrible. There were no movie theaters in the village, there was no public transportation or taxis for anyone who wanted to go from place to place, and should I have been in an emergency that would require the assistance of police, firefighters, or doctors... well, there wasn't much choice available.

When I returned home, I was glad to have had the opportunity to go to Valemount, but I was happy to be back in my city. The experience I had with Valemount was interesting enough that subsequently I would occasionally pose the question as to what I would possibly do if conveniences and my present situation were not up to what I had experienced. What if all the restaurants were gone? Well, I would have to be more creative with cooking. What if the library was also gone? Hopefully I would still have the Internet. But what if not only the Internet was gone, but any other trace of modern conveniences for me? What if the entire village was gone and I was suddenly plunked down in what the area would have been like before people settled in that area? Now that would be really tough for me. Oh sure, for the first few hours I would probably be okay. But as time went on, I would soon start to get hungry and thirsty, and while I might be able to find a creek and a river, getting food would be a more difficult task for me. I have no idea how to live off the land. There is the additional problem that the more time I was out in the wilderness, the more chance I would come across an ornery animal of some sort that might be a danger to my health. While I am thinking about my health, I feel it's a good time to reveal that sometimes my wild daydreaming gets me to thinking about adding an additional complication to being trapped in the wilderness far away from civilization. What if I found myself not only stuck in the wilderness, but also suffering from some kind of great injury? I must confess that the only helpful advice I can think of for that particular situation is if I had a broken limb, not to make any kind of splint for it. I'm not trained in first aid, so any kind of attempt I made to make a splint might give me more trouble down the road.

Why do I so often allow my mind to think about being stuck in the wilderness so far from civilization, sometimes also giving myself the scenario of being gravely injured? I think it's for two reasons. One reason is a way to push myself to be prepared for any bad situation. Another reason is that by thinking of bad situations, I see that my present situation by comparison is pretty good. Anyway, I think you might have guessed that the movie I am reviewing here - Man In The Wilderness - has this same premise I have given myself ample time to think about. But adding to my interest was not only was the story in this movie inspired by a (supposedly) true story, it was the same story that the 2015 Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Revenant was based on. I did like The Revenant, so I wanted to see if this earlier telling was just as successful. In this particular cinematic telling, the central figure is a man with the name Zachary Bass (Richard Harris, The Deadly Trackers). He is part of a fur pelt expedition in the American northwest territories in 1820, which is lead by a man known as Captain Henry (John Huston, Tentacles). The expedition has made a good haul, and is making its way back east towards civilization where the men can exchange the pelts for money. But during a break in their journey, Bass is suddenly attacked by a bear and savagely mauled, putting him in a coma. After the attack, Henry sees that Bass, while still alive, is almost at death's door. Henry makes the decision to leave Bass where he is and to continue the journey without him. However, after Henry and the other men leave, Bass wakes up from his coma. Despite being gravely injured, Bass manages to get water and food in the area. Soon he's able to move around more freely, though his injuries make his pace extremely slow. Though his pace may be slow, Bass is determined to make the journey back east despite many dangers along the way like savage animals and hostile Native Americans - with the thought of Henry and the other men burning greatly in his vengeance-seeking mind.

As you might have seen from that description, Man In The Wilderness is technically a western of sorts, though its taking place earlier in American history than what most would consider to be the western era. While at first thought most people might not be able to picture the typically affable actor Richard Harris in a more macho role and in a harsh western-era environment, my earlier review of The Deadly Trackers showed Harris could pull it off. It wasn't then a surprise that Harris managed to do it with this movie as well; in fact, I say that he does it despite some extra harsh challenges. For starters, his character Zachary Bass has a limited amount of dialogue, often spending great stretches of the movie without saying a word at all. With a limited amount of time to talk, Harris has to show what Bass is feeling or thinking with his body language. It certainly helped Harris that his character is made to interact with the harsh environment, from crawling in icy-cold rivers to facing wild animals; you can feel Harris' discomfort and unease in these sequences. But Harris's character not just shows physical discomfort, but also mental anguish. When he thinks back on how Captain Henry and the other men abandoned him during his hour of need, you see great (yet believable) rage in his eyes. While he starts off with a quest to get back at Captain Henry and the other men, you cannot help but have a good deal of sympathy and understanding of his frame of mind, even if you might think that you wouldn't be able to be dead set on revenge if you were in the same circumstances. Harris keeps us interested in Bass despite learning (from some flashbacks) some questionable things about Bass' past as the story progresses, such as the fact that it's shown that years earlier, he abandoned his infant son.

Such revelations, I feel I should add, also remain palatable because the screenplay goes to the trouble to answer why Zachary Bass in the past made those dark choices. At the same time, however, I have to admit that all these things we learn about Bass' past don't really add up to much; at the end of the movie, you would probably have had the same feelings about Bass the man and Bass' final actions if these flashbacks were not in the movie at all. All these flashbacks really do is just extend the running time of the movie to 104 minutes in length. For that matter, Man In The Wilderness also focuses a lot of time on Captain Henry and his men travelling through the cold winter while feeling Bass is long behind them. Again, most of this footage doesn't do much. It might have been better to have cut most of this footage out and just have Henry and company reappear at the very end, an ending that I would like to also comment on. I'll give this to the ending - it's to a degree an unexpected ending, which I definitely appreciated. At the same time, to a degree it will have you thinking, "Just what was the point of showing all of Zachary Bass' struggles then?" (No, what you are probably thinking does not happen, but it's still a kind of deflating ending.) On more positive notes, the screenplay by Jack DeWitt (A Man Called Horse) does liberally spread some nicely scripted touches from start to end that help the audience not to think about the sometimes-weaker scripted moments. The characters of Captain Henry and his team are made to be people who are both good and bad. For example, while their first instincts are to help Bass during and after his attack from a bear, eventually the pressing problem of nearby hostile Native Americans, the approaching winter, and simple greed coming from the cargo they are desperate to sell don't take long for them to abandon Bass. When the movie occasionally cuts back to them during their journey home, you see they still have regrets and fears despite their still remaining greed.

So, thinking about it, maybe the characters of Captain Henry and his crew do serve a purpose, even if it's not up and front like the plight of Bass. Getting back to Bass, he has many interesting vignettes during his journey, from finding food and water to hiding from hostile Native Americans. Sometimes these vignettes seem a little pointless, such as when Bass observes a pregnant Native American, but I will say something about all of the padding that I observed - while it may be padding, it is never boring padding. There is excitement when Bass has to fight wolves over the carcass of a bison, there is genuine tension in the air when Captain Henry and his men are alone at night in the middle of the snowy nowhere where danger might pop out unexpectedly, and the wilderness that Bass and the other characters struggle through has seldom looked so desolate, dirty, and haunting. Just about every moment has a feeling of authenticity, even when on paper it might sound outlandish, such as the eye-catching visuals that open the movie. Director Richard C. Sarafian (Vanishing Point) succeed with the tricky request that Man In The Wilderness demands, to make a hellish and uncivilized cinematic world all the same have something about it that makes us interested and keep watching, even though it's clearly a world that probably none of us would ever like to experience. However, I personally would like to be in the part of this world where after many grueling and filthy struggles, a severely injured man can abruptly look clean and presentable with no grooming tools or any other apparent source of assistance. Minor quibbles like that aside, Man In The Wilderness is a very good movie. It would make a very interesting double bill with the much better known The Revenant.

(Posted August 16, 2025)