The film examines the mind of anthropologist Ethan Powell who had been missing for a few years, living in the jungle of Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest with mountain gorillas. He is convicted of killing and injuring several supposed Wilderness Park Rangers in East Africa, and is sent to prison. A bright young psychiatrist, Theo Caulder, tries to find out why he killed them, but becomes entangled in a quest to learn the true history and nature of humankind, stating that civilization has steadily destroyed the natural world, advocating that humans abandon this. Eventually it is revealed that during the course of Powell's stay with the gorillas, they accepted him as part of their group; he was attempting to protect his great ape family when the poachers arrived and started shooting them. He gets a hearing to reveal the truth, but an attack by a vicious guard on another prisoner causes Powell to be reminded of the killed gorillas, at which point he violently attacks the guard to stop him, is restrained and stops talking again. At the end of the film, Powell escapes from prison using a pen to dig out the lock on a window, and heads back to Africa.
The film received mixed reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a critic score of 26% based on reviews from 65 critics. The site's consensus states: "A convoluted and predictable plot overshadows the performances."[4]Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 43 out of 100 based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[5]
James Berardinelli gave the film 2.5 out 4 describing the film as having "Solid directing and good acting!"[6]
The film underperformed at the box-office, grossing only $34,105,207 in the United States and Canada.[8] The film won a Genesis Award for its themes of animal rights.[9] On the day of the premiere for this film in Orlando, FL, Cuba Gooding, Jr. added his handprints to a star outside of the Chinese Theater at MGM Studios, a park at Walt Disney World. This walk of fame is a replica of the famous Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
