Never Cry Wolf [Anchor Bay]

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Here's a film you don't have to think about much to enjoy: Two eyes and a pair of ears are enough. Adapted from Farley Mowat's best-selling autobiographical book, "Never Cry Wolf" is a beautifully photographed, beautifully crafted nature study, with perhaps just a tad more moralizing at the end than necessary. Since its release to theaters in 1983, only its appearance on DVD has done justice to its picture and sound.

Charles Martin Smith has the prize role of his career as the young biologist, Tyler, assigned by the Canadian Wildlife Service to study wolves in the northern Barrens. His charge is to gather evidence that wolves are depleting the caribou herds, enough evidence against the wolves to justify the government eradicating them.

What he discovers, needless to say, is just the opposite. Wolves and caribou live in perfect balance, as they have for thousands of years; the wolves feed only on the sickest and weakest of the herds, making the caribou stronger all around. It is Man who is decimating the caribou, largely for sport, and now Man needs a scapegoat.

In his film interpretation of the book, director Carroll Ballard misses some of Mowat's wry humor but makes up for it in the majesty of the scenery and the beauty of the wildlife. Sweeping vistas of Arctic wilderness are set against human and animal drama in Ballard's realization of the saga, the wolves, ironically, taking on a dimension of humanity sorely missing in most of the story's peripheral characters.

Besides Tyler the other actors in this sparsely populated film are Brian Dennehy as Rosie, a pilot whose ambitions are entirely geared to personal profit; Samson Jorah as Mike, an Inuit who befriends Tyler and loans him the use of his cabin; and Zachary Illimangnaq as Ootek, an Inuit shaman who knows more about wolves than most wolves.

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