Movie Thoughts: Silver Wolf (1999)

•  Released: January 10 1999
• Directed by: Peter Svatek
• Running time: 1 h 39 min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A boy named Jesse and his uncle take in a wounded wolf, and the bond between the boy and the wolf in turn helps him cope with the loss of his father.

My Thoughts

I had no idea what to expect going into this. I just saw a movie with a wolf on the poster and in the title, and that convinced me to watch it. You know me, I love wolves, I'll watch anything with them in it.

So why is the rating score so low? Okay, so I know I sometimes tend to harp on people not using real wolves or wolf-looking dogs to play wolves in films. I'm personally okay with using these as long as they're used well end their welfare is kept in mind. I also prefer as little interaction between wolf and other species (humans included) as possible. An example of a movie that did this well was Misa Mi (2003), where the main character and her wolf friend were close but didn't really directly interact all that much. It was more of a mutual understanding from a distance.

So what did Silver Wolf do wrong? Well, at first glance, not that much. They use real wolves, but in early stages of the movie the interaction between human and wolf is pretty minimal. Jesse feeds Silver once through the bars of his cage, that's all okay. 

But then the film progresses and the wolf basically becomes a glorified dog. Jesse somehow expects his wolf to not leave the pen if he can, to fetch sticks (yes, really) and, worst of all, he literally participates in a dog race with the wolf. It's basically a combined competition consisting of biking in the dirt and then going on skis/a snowboard and having your dog (or in Jesse's cage, wolf) pull you forward. 

And they used an actual wolf for this race, or at least a very high content wolfdog because I saw no dog-like characteristics on this animal at all. The wolf very clearly exhibits signs of stress during these scenes and even in context of the movie of course it goes wrong. What do you expect, entering a wild animal that isn't socialized or familiarized with loud noises, other people and similar stuff at all? 

It also has this needless demonization of zoos. Jesse would literally keep his wolf as a pet than put him in a zoo or rescue center. Yes, there's definitely bad zoos and rescues, but at least give it a chance? The ultimate solution to the "where does Silver belong"-problem ends up being releasing him back into the wild, which is a huge risk since if his pack hadn't accepted him back he might as well have died out there since he became familiarized with humans and therefore would be very likely to interact with them in the future. 

So, yeah, I'd rather they used a dog for the racing scenes where the wolf actor they used is clearly distressed. How they even got a wolf to try on a harness and train it to pull Jesse on a snowboard in the first place is beyond me. It's a wild animal, not a dog. Don't do this to them.

Alright, wolf welfare aside, how does the rest hold up? Characters were decent, cinematography was nothing special but not particularly bad either, soundtrack had some enjoyable pieces. One thing that did also bother me, though, was the fact that they couldn't get the wolf actor to howl on command, so instead they played howling noises over him with his muzzle closed. Really distracting.

The fact that somehow entering a full-blooded wolf into a race also isn't breaking any rules for whatever reason is also just horribly distracting. The only person who brings this up is portrayed as the villain, that's just great.

So, yeah, it would be decent if it had kept wolf welfare and respect for wild animals in mind better, but I can't morally give it any higher than two for how it used its wolf actor.