Call of the Wild

Finally!  A modern remake of one of the beloved novels from my childhood.  “Call of the Wild” is the story of Buck, an exuberant family pet, part St. Bernard and part Scottish Shepherd.  Anyway you look at it, he is a big, powerful dog.  Buck is dognapped and shipped up north to the Klondike where big dogs are needed to pull the sleds of the would-be gold miners in the Goldrush of the 1890’s.  In this harsh climate he  meets a series of masters, some kind, some not so kind.  One of those masters is Harrison Ford playing John Thornton, Buck’s last and the most compassionate of his owers.  If you have never read the book, I think you will find this movie satisfying and even inspirational.  If you are an aficiando of the book, you will find it a little less so, but still a solid movie.  I am confused, though, as to why one of the most powerful scenes in the book was completely left out of the movie.  In that scene, to help John Thornton win a bet, Buck breaks a frozen sled free from ice and pulls the load of 1000 pounds of flour 100 yards.  However, not in the movie! The movie also glosses over some of the harsh treatment Buck gets, which really makes you relate to what he goes through, but shows enough for us to get the idea.  The movie is also marred by some pretty noticable continuity errors.  Where does John Thornton get the canoe?  Why is he going on a long journey with no supplies in his canoe  only to have them magically appear when the canoe goes around a corner?  Where did the tent magically come from?  My biggest quibble is with the CGI Buck though.  He comes across as bigger than life.  It is hard to feel for his suffering when he is a big, powerful dog who could easily best most men he come in contact with.  The book also ends a little differently than the book which has some Native-American Yeehats massacre John Thronton.  Even with these few misfires, the setting is spot-on and Harrison Ford’s narration and acting makes this a worthy, if flawed, adaptation.