Wordiezett So much average

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Scott LeBrun Based on James-Oliver Curwoods' 1917 novel "The Grizzly King", "The Bear" is quite remarkable, a heart tugging and involving drama where animal actors are at the forefront. At the beginning, a grizzly cub is orphaned, and the poor little thing eventually hooks up with an adult Kodiak bear. The big and fearsome Kodiak becomes the cubs' companion and protector, but is itself a tempting prize for a pair of hunters, Bill (Jack Wallace), and Tom (Tcheky Karyo).Written by Gerard Brach ("Repulsion", "Frantic") and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud ("Quest for Fire"), what's nice about "The Bear" is how well it manages to promote love and respect for Mother Nature. It's a beautifully shot (by Philippe Rousselot), picturesque story, with no shortage of perils into which our four legged heroes are placed. It may be hard for some people to watch at times, although scenes of harm to animals were faked as best as possible using special effects. (Admittedly, the blood looks rather like paint.) It's sometimes manipulative, to be honest, but it still engages the viewer, thanks to a delightful pair of performances by Bart (the Kodiak) and Youk (the cub). Youk in particular is adorable. Wallace and Karyo are good, refraining from being purely one dimensional. Philippe Sarde composed the touching music score.The film is actually not without humour, and even creates some surreal "nightmare" sequences containing striking imagery.Must viewing for lovers of both cinema and animals.Eight out of 10.

sol ***SPOILER*** Beautifully and breathtakingly photographed in the Italian Alps, subbing for the snow capped mountains of British Columbia, "The Bear" is one of the finest films about man and beast, in this case grizzly bears, to come out in the last 30 or so years. There's this 1,500 grizzly, Bart, who's injured by a pair of trophy hunters who turns violent and after attacking the hunters camp ends up killing and injuring all their pack mules and horses.It's little Youk a baby grizzly bear who's mother was killed in an avalanche who tries to befriend Big Bart who at first drives him away and later, after Youk ends up licking and cleaning his gunshot wound, accepts him as his own. While all this is going on the two hunters are determined to track down Big Bart and kill him before he does any more damage. Big Bart who knows the landscape far better then the two hunters eludes them at every turn but little Youk isn't that successful. Youk get caught by the hunters and left tied in their camp as a pet together with the hunters tracking dogs.***SPOILERS*** It's later when one of the hunters is caught off guard, minus his bear killing rifle, that Big Bart confronts him on a mountain ledge having him scared, in knowing what Big Bart is capable of doing, out of his wits. With the terrified hunter showing fear as well as submission Big Bart in returns show the helpless hunter the kind of mercy that he and his fellows hunter never showed to the big bad bear. What's even more striking in all this is that Big Bart was shot and seriously wounded while eating wild berries, and not attacking them,by the hunters earlier as well as him being tracked down by them to be killed while at first being no threat to them at all! Yet Big Bart showed the trapped hunter the kind of human like mercy that he or any other hunter would have never showed to him under the same circumstances!****MORE SPOILERS*** With the hunter now a changed man he refuses to gun down Big Bart when he with his back turned walks away from him. He also gets his fellow hunter to do the same thing without telling him of the frighting and traumatic as well as heart lifting experience he just had with the big grizzly. With the now changed, in killing wild animals, hunters releasing little Youk back into the wild the cute little bear is soon stalked and confronted by a hungry and ferocious mountain lion who after what seemed like over a mile chase cornered him and was just about to stick his deadly claws and fangs into the helpless baby bear. It's just then that something caught the mountain lions attention and he not only ceased his attacking little Youk but turned tail and ran for his life. It was Youk's adopted daddy Big Bart who despite being separated from little Youk for some time he in fact didn't forget him as he came to his rescue!

TheUnknown837-1 I tend to be a genuine sucker for animal pictures. One of the reasons may be because animals are so genuinely unpredictable, unlike most people in the movies these days. You can look into the eyes of most animals and not have a real clear picture of what they are thinking or feeling. So I sometimes find movie-animals more fascinating than movie-people. But the second—and primary—reason is because they bring me to admire the skills and patience that go into making a film. All movies are difficult to make, even the awful ones. That goes without saying. But there a number of them where the tremendous effort does not really paint itself on the screen, regardless of whether they are good or bad, absorbing or unbearable. I tend to be astonishing by animal movies for the same reason I tend to be astonished by movies featuring stop-motion animation: I instantly become aware of the exhaustion the creators had to subject themselves to.To make "The Bear," the filmmakers required their stars, two bears, one an adult, the other a cub, to crawl across landscapes, play around in water, and appear to grow close to one another. The cub is orphaned at the beginning of the picture when its mother is killed in a landslide; the adult is a territorial old male wounded by bear hunters. Now the bears had to perform just right before the camera. They had to not only appear convincing, but maintain continuity whenever the director would decide it was time to move the camera to another angle. I've heard of accounts where the director and trainer would wait all day just to get the bear cub to turn its head in the right direction for a subsequent shot and then keep its head there when they got to that subsequent shot.On that level, and others, "The Bear" is an absorbing movie-going experience. But it is also a glorious massage on the senses. First of all, it looks beautiful. The directing, which consists of numerous cuts, not just long documentary extreme wide-angles, is consistently interesting. Also remarkable is the sound design. The movie was probably shot, mostly, without any sound equipment, for the trainers would be shouting at the bears every second, commanding them what to do and when. So every footstep, every grunt, snarl, bird chirp, gust of wind, sound of a grasshopper, you name it, was developed and integrated in post-production. Yet it all feels so natural; it was not until after I saw the movie that I became aware of this, once again reminding me of how much stress the filmmakers had to put upon themselves.Just imaging the making of "The Bear" puts my memories of volunteering on "The Boarder," a low-budget family drama shot in rural Nebraska, to shame.I also liked the movie for its human scenes. I guess that contradicts part of my opening statement, but then again, there seems to be an exception to every rule when it comes to the movies. The only humans in the movies are the two hunters chasing after the adult bear. Apart from the wonderful acting by Jack Wallace and Tcheky Karyo, I also enjoyed the level of detail given to them. The way, in the opening, the movie breaks down the process by which they hunt the bear. I particularly liked the touch where Mr. Wallace plucks some grass and lets it fly from his fingertips in the wind, so he knows just how much he needs to angle his rifle before he takes the shot. These are pretty interesting characters, and I actually did not mind it so much when their moral denouement at the end flew completely from the realm of predictability."The Bear" only loses its head when it tries to get inside the mind of a bear. Literally. Animals dream. Anybody who has ever owned a dog knows that. But just what they dream or what they see in their dreams is anybody's guess. Now the movie does offer a suggestion: a purple-tinted world with a quirkier-moving version of the animal wandering about in some strange surrounding. The dream sequences are handled through stop-motion animation: the other movie-making process that astounds me. And also I certainly did not mind seeing the animation, it nevertheless broke the shape of the picture. More effective would have been implying that the animal was dreaming and allowing us to use our imagination.

cmarine-2 The Bear is definitely an adult appropriate movie, but not appropriate for kids. It should probably be rated PG-13 at the least. There were several frightening and distressful scenes that were hard to watch that contained blood splatters, animal cries, wounds and deaths. This was especially hard to watch if you love animals and hate hunting! The moral of the story was a good one and should be taken seriously, but was over-shadowed by the endless terror and gore throughout most of the movie. For instance, just when you feel the worst is over, the baby bear is chased by a vicious cougar and is attacked, blood is shown. I am a young adult who found it hard to sit through this movie without fast-forwarding some of the traumatic scenes. While the scenery was beautiful and there were a few precious moments shared between the baby bear and the adult bear, these weren't the focus of the movie. Parents be advised when showing this movie to your children.