A young man stands on an icy plain, watching the rickety plane that brought him there disappear over the horizon. Save a few light bulbs, a canoe and lots of asparagus, he is alone. A sense of forlorn hopelessness descends upon him as the grumbling airplane motor fades into the distance.
So begins "Never Cry Wolf," the 1982 live action Disney movie. Based on the Farley Mowat memoir of the same name, the film follows the travails of Tyler (Charles Martin Smith), a young wildlife biologist on a mission. He has been sent by the United States government to Alaska to justify the premeditated extermination of the little-known Arctic wolf. Somehow, the government has already determined the wolf is the sole cause of the alarming depletion of caribou in the area, though no scientist had ever seen a wolf take down a caribou.
The first 20 minutes of "Wolf" chronicle hapless Tyler's adaptation to the Alaskan wilderness. His ineptitude would be amusing, except that it almost gets him killed. The Alaskan wilderness is no place for an ill-prepared, slightly goofy looking young man who expects to study its most elusive inhabitant. A mysterious Inuit named Ootek saves him on the first wintry night. Tyler is first and foremost a government tool, determined to follow the rules and fill out the triplicate forms, but the elderly native man represents what he longs to achieve - oneness with nature.
All this changes upon Tyler's first sighting of a wolf, a lanky white male he later calls George. Only by ignoring the rulebook does Tyler gain the wolf's attention, and eventually, his indifference. George and his mate Angie, another leggy white wolf, continue with the work of living under Tyler's observation. He notices things aren't exactly as he expected most notably, the wolves seem to eat only field mice. Can a large carnivore subsist on a diet solely of mice? To answer that, Tyler decides to see if a certain large carnivore who is running out of asparagus can survive on mice. And so begins Tyler's understanding of wolves, or his descent into wolf mania, depending on how one looks at it.
Director Carroll Ballard takes some considerable liberties with Farley Mowat's text at this point. Mowat's book is nonfiction; he really was the young wildlife biologist sent to investigate the wolves.
Perhaps to add a more human element to the story, Ballard chooses to portray Tyler as a kind of Tarzan. He never becomes "one" with the wolf pack, but Tyler does reject human society for a life roaming the arctic plains by the time the film is over. Choosing to highlight Tyler's transformation over the saga of the wolves' destiny as a species is a debatable one. The scrolling text that opens the film states its thesis as Tyler's quest to investigate the wolves' "guilty until proven innocent" status. But the Inuit song that ends "Wolf" is a testament to Tyler's metamorphosis.
Ballard paces "Wolf" with the intensity of a nature documentary. Long, loving shots of the stark Alaskan wilderness would have made the movie a fine and appropriate IMAX project. The film must have been a monster to shoot, with harsh weather conditions and wild animals to incorporate. Smith, as Tyler, carries his role easily, playing goofy and serene equally well. Brian Dennehy is also outstanding as Rosie, the rogue pilot turned developer (the closest "Wolf" approaches a tangible villain). Mike, the Inuit man who joins Tyler on and off during his tenure in Alaska, is equally well cast.
Beyond such surface triumphs, however, the film fails to answer its main question: What becomes of Tyler's government report? What of the future of the wolves, whom the audience has grown to respect as Tyler does? Ballard only steers clear of anthropomorphizing to a certain extent here.
Mowat's memoir ends with a bombshell, but Ballard chooses to change it entirely. "Wolf" has a little bombshell all its own, and that's not just the fictional Tyler's choice to forsake Western society. By focusing on how the wolves have forever changed the future of a man, Ballard has missed Mowat's more pressing point - how have men forever changed the future of all wolves?
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