Call of the Wild: Man and Dog Find Escape Through Nature

Movie Review: Call of the Wild (2020)
Version: Amazon Prime rental

Call of the Wild is a film as big as all the outdoors and as intimate as the heart of the family dog. We witness this in this amazing film based on the book of the same name by Jack London.

This is an ambitious telling of the tale done in a little over an hour and a half. In it, we meet a rambunctious family mutt named Buck, owned by a county judge whom only the judge likes but only a town scoundrel dares snare to sell to some anonymous newspaper ad seeing dogs to help tame the Alaska wilderness. And so, Buck finds himself on a train ride north from his comfortable California home to a whole new life in the snow-filled gold fields of the Yukon. Buck learns a whole new way of living, including how to walk on ice, how to navigate in snow, and how to mush on a dog sled as part of a scraggly team led by likable French Canadian postman Perrault (Omar Sy). It's finding his snow legs and helping Perrault meet the challenge of making a delivery schedule that Buck finds the call of the wild inherent in his soul. Midway through the delivery schedule, Perrault's contract is canceled and Buck and the team are put up for sale. It's now that Buck meets an old acquaintance, John Thornton (Harrison Ford), an old man who has escaped the misfortunes of life to live out fate in the wild country. He rescues Buck from a dangerous fortune hunter (Dan Stevens) but with the understanding Buck is free to go his own way any time. A friendship is bonded nonetheless and the two set off on a journey of discovery that leads Thornton to find the richness of life and Buck the keys to legacy from his own personal call to the wild.

This film isn't about Harrison Ford's character -- he is very much a supporting actor in this role. And yet Call of the Wild would very much not be the film it is without him in that role. It defines his legacy as a lead actor even so. I would see this movie just to see him in this role. At the same time, the main character, Buck, isn't even an actor. This is probably a SPOILER, so read with caution, but Buck is done all in CGI. Imagine all the things Buck must do to make this character come to life and the effort required to train a dog to do them all, and get the expressions on its face. In a sense that's a cheat, making Ford's work to carry this film even more weighty. To our fortune, it all works, brilliantly.

The setting for most of this film, the wild of Alaska and the Yukon, the wild of nature, is also brilliant. It calls to you as it calls to Thornton and especially to Buck. This would be even more so on the large screen in a theater, of course, but being as COVID-19 interrupted theater screenings, we will just have to imagine that.

The book Call of the Wild was written in 1903 but London's story translates well thematically and technically in 2020. We can all appreciate the breath of fresh air it represents cinematically and metaphorically in these complicated, claustrophobic times. I suggest you gather the family around the big screen at home this weekend and enjoy Call of the Wild and escape the wild ride we are on for at least and hour and a half (and some change).

Blade Runner 2049: As Dark, Dank, and Mystical as the Original

Movie Review: Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Version: Library borrow

Blade Runner 2049 is the sequel to the 1982 scifi hit, Blade Runner, and takes place thirty years later. It is as dark, dank, and mystical as the original, but it is as equally imaginative and amazing to watch.

In today's version, original protagonist Rick Deckard (played once again by Harrison Ford) has gone missing for thirty years. Our new protagonist "K" (played by Ryan Gosling), is an enigmatic LAPD officer and blade runner with no human name gunning for rogue replicants with little apparent regard for life. He does, however, have a soft spot for a holographic heart throb named Joi (played by Ana de Armas), whom he upgrades from apartment mate to case partner in a heart beat. She helps K seek out Deckard, whom K finds is tied into a mysterious case involving an old corpse with indications of a replicant childbirth, which is both unheard of and troublesome for human-replicant relations. He finds himself opposed by a stealthy and dangerous replicant named Luv (played by Sylvia Hoeks), who is also in search of Deckard and the child they both find out still exists. Both think Deckard is the key to finding the child -- Luv for using the child to further research into replicant birthing, and K for killing. Deckard, hiding in deserted Las Vegas, hid the child thirty years ago and has no idea where it is, yet K and Luv battle it out for control of existing clues.

What is intriguing about Blade Runner 2049 is its breadth of vision and attention to detail. The director, set designer, and cinematographer went into great depth to tell this story. The constant fog and drip of water, the great wall protecting the city from the ocean and the powerful ocean waves on its opposing side, the gritty urban facade and the sleazy sexual debauchery of urban decay, the dank loneliness of the countryside. Every imaginative detail is there, lending authenticity to the story. The characters are made powerfully real by great acting performances. Yet true to the original Blade Runner, not much of that universe seems to have changed, visually.

What is mystical is the story line. But then, this is science fiction, a story of a future world in which we aren't totally familiar. The idea of replicants, the people who hunt them down if they get out of line, and a dystopian future existence unrelatable to us naturally makes this all confusing to us. Even though stories of dystopian futures is a popular genre today. That's really what made the original Blade Runner interesting before and now Blade Runner 2049 interesting now. They explore ideas that make us uncomfortable and themes that seem unfathomable yet potentially unavoidable.

Walking out of the theater, or if you're watching it on DVD walking away from the TV screen, and back into reality, you can feel a sense of relief in today's world, even as crazy at it sometimes seems. You can tell yourself, "Thank God this make-believe world is a long time away, and maybe there's still time to avoid it." But then, as of this writing, 2049 is only 31 years in the future. Can we see the Earth getting to this place by then? It is, after all, just science fiction -- right?