Turtle: The Incredible Journey

Filmmaker Nick Stringer's documentary—soberly narrated by Miranda Richardson—begins on the Florida coast with grown loggerhead turtles emerging from the sea to deposit their eggs onshore before returning to the water. In time the offspring hatch, dig out of the sand, and scramble to reach the safety of the ocean while birds and crabs attack and feast on most of them. This rather gruesome opening sequence serves as the introduction to a far more pleasant tale of how one turtle survives, swims across the world, and eventually returns to its place of origin to continue the cycle of life. You have to admire the energy of Stringer and cameraman Rory McGuinness, who took two years to assemble the footage stitched together to portray the quarter-of-a-century journey of a single turtle from Florida across the Atlantic to the Azores and back again. Along the way, the heroic critter meets up with plenty of other underwater denizens—most notably sharks and jellyfish—and experiences a potentially lethal encounter with a human being that instead turns out to be an occasion for kindness. Turtle ends with a plea to viewers to join the effort to save the turtles and other sea life endangered by ecological change. More suited for airing on Animal Planet than in theaters, this somewhat heavy-handed message film is still a strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)