erehwald Movie Critic A CRY IN THE WILDMark Griffith teams up with actor Jared Rushton to create a movie Adaption of the novel Hatchet. The movie is called "A CRY IN THE WILD". In the movie Brian crashes and is trying to survive in the wilderness.Mark Griffith and his crew really capture how Brian is surviving. I like that because it goes into depth of how Brian is staying alive. I also like how it shows that Brian cares for the bear cubs. It is funny to see Brian try to fish. I really liked the part where Brian is fishing and falls into the water.Mark Griffith also messed up a few things in the movie. For example, a few hours after he crashed, a plane came by. In the book the plane comes after he has a shelter. He also finds the shelter later than in the book. When Brian goes to find food, he goes to where he can not see the lake. In the book, he never goes somewhere where he can not see the lake. A few days after he finds the shelter, he builds a giant wall around it with the help of rope. It is very unrealistic that he just suddenly has rope. Also, a bear comes to invade his camp regularly. It is pretty unrealistic that a bear would come again if he did not get anything from the first raid. When he has in the forest at night, he was ambushed by a bear. When he stabbed the bear, blood came squirting out in an unrealistic way. Earlier, he was "hugging" a bear. That was unrealistic. Then, he got a bow and arrows and was a master archer. Very unrealistic. At the camp, he suddenly has drums and plays on them. Where did he get them from? Also, the tornado was not on there, it was only a breeze. Not too realistic. Lastly, he does not build a raft to get the emergency pack.I would give the movie 4 stars. It was not the worst or the best movie I have ever seen. Mark Griffith could have made the tornado show more, show how Brian created the bow and arrows, and replace the bear with the moose.

cwalter-225-833802 ( A Cry in the Wild )Mark Griffith teams up with Jared Rushton recreate the adventurous story of the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. Did he succeed? We'll get to that later. In the movie A Cry in the Wild, young Brian Robeson played by Jared Rushton goes to visit his father. On the way, the pilot suffers a severe heart attack which causes the plane to crash in the middle of the Canadian wilderness which happens in the book as well. Brian has to face many hardships such as bears, food scarceness, building a shelter, making a fire, and more. To make things worse, all he has is a hatchet that his mother had given him before the trip. When in the end the plane rescues him, he is reunited with his family. The director Mark Griffith did a fairly good job of making the movie similar to the novel with a few mistakes here and there. All in all, Mark Griffith and Jared Rushton did a pretty good job of reinventing the novel into a movie.Mark Griffith and his crew really do a great job in choosing the right setting. There are mountains, a lake, a thick forest, and everything you'd expect to be present. Also, they did a satisfying job of showing that in the beginning of the novel Brian acts very much like a city boy and doesn't adapt to the wilderness until later. I think it's important that the setting is very similar to how it was described in the book because then you can really see what it looked like and see if your imagination of it is similar. It is important that they showed "Brian" as a city boy in the beginning because the change from the " Old Brian" to the "New Brian" is a major part of the novel. In conclusion, Mark Griffith and his team did a fair job of recreating the novel.Things I didn't like about this movie are mainly about how it's different from the novel. For example, in the book Brian never eats grubs or rubs mud in his face to repel the mosquitoes. He also never has memories of home which he does in the movie. Also, in the novel he finds turtle eggs and raspberries. In the movie he never finds any sort of eggs and blackberries instead of raspberries. Plus the bear comes up way too much in the movie, in comparison to the book, where the bear only comes up once or twice. In addition, the events are all out of order. For example, the tornado comes really late. I think it is important for the scenes to match the novel and robe in the right sequence in order to resemble the novel well. Now for the horrible special effect. When Brian in the movie stabs the bear, blood comes squirting out of the bear's chest in a highly unnatural way. Also in the book, Brian's windbreaker was torn but in the movie it was in top condition. Additionally, when the plane surfaces after the tornado, in the novel Brian builds a raft to get to it and it takes him the whole day. However, in the movie he hangs onto a log and it only takes him a few hours maximum to get the emergency pack. He also manages to shoot a bird the first time he tries with his new bow and arrow which is slightly unrealistic because that takes some practice. Finally, the movie has some major mistakes and some minor fixes, but it's a pretty fine movie for the 90's.As one can see, the movie "A Cry in the Wild" has its ups and downs. This is why I give it 2 1/2 out of five stars. I gave it this rating because I think it should resemble the novel more. Plus the actor Jared Rushton could have shown more emotion. In conclusion, the movie " A Cry in the Wild" is definitely not my favorite movie. It was unrealistic, didn't represent the novel very much and wasn't very exciting.

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".

whitneyite1 This movie is the adaptation of Gary Paulsen's "Hatchet". It is a good representation of the movie, and very hard to find. It is good to have in school libraries, as "Hatchet" and other Paulsen books are so popular. While the cover may be misleading to those who want an "action" movie, the film is faithful to the book, which is on a middle-school, junior-high reading level. The acting is good. The outdoor scenes are great. The landscapes and weather conditions that contribute to the book's success are easily the best part of the movie. Brian, a child of a broken home, is sent to visit the father, but is involved in a plane crash when the pilot has a heart attack. Brian is stranded in the frozen wilderness for 52 days.