Man in the Wilderness

Stop me if you've heard this one before. In South Dakota, circa the 1820s, a guide (Richard Harris) is nearly fatally mauled by a bear and left for dead by his expedition party of fur trappers, who—intriguingly—are transporting a boat that looks like something out of the story of Noah. While the bear didn't kill him, the local Indians and oncoming winter might, but he is determined to survive, if only to take his revenge on the expedition's increasingly paranoid leader (John Huston). To quote the 1971 movie's tagline: “They just couldn't find the time to bury him. They should have.” If this sounds a lot like The Revenant, the 2015 multiple-Oscar winner, it's because both films share the same real-life source material—the legend of frontiersman Hugh Glass, who likewise survived a grizzly attack and made his way back to civilization (here, he is called Zachary Bass). This is a decidedly more family-appropriate wilderness saga that is also more respectful of Native-American culture than the traditional cowboys-and-Indians Hollywood Westerns. The survival story is the most gripping aspect of this film that can get bogged down in flashbacks of Bass's lonely childhood and of his late wife and a son he barely knows. Filmed on location, Man in the Wilderness looks beautiful in its Blu-ray debut. A strong optional purchase. (D. Liebenson)