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Wildcat Movie Review

Wildcat is a 2022 documentary film directed by Trevor Frost and Melissa Lesh. It’s a morally complicated, but moving and powerful documentary.

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“He’s saving me.

I’m saving him“

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Back from war in Afghanistan, a young British soldier struggling with depression and PTSD finds a second chance in the Amazon rainforest when he meets an American scientist, and together they foster an orphaned baby ocelot. This is a very complex issue and the movie does feel a bit exploitative in its approach, but it does raise some interesting questions regarding the thorny ethics behind these interspecies relationships.

The ocelot is so cute and as a baby he was downright adorable. Most of his scenes were so endearing. But the film depicts that having any animal, especially a predator grow with humans and reach maturity without their biological parents is problematic. Obviously, the alternative would be death itself as these people are helping abandoned and endangered animals, but still a question arises of just how ethical this practice is and just how capable these animals would be of living on their own afterward.

The hunting scenes were the prime example of this issue as the movie depicted just how difficult it was for this guy to train the ocelot to hunt on his own. But the ending of the film was so emotionally powerful that it really affected him as we saw the two say goodbye to one another. You could sense the genuine bond that developed between the two as the movie wears its heart on its sleeves.

But Wildcat is just as much a story about this troubled man as it is a story about an ocelot. He is a guy who just cannot sort his life as he went to war in Afghanistan, then he returned and suffered from PTSD, which led to his relocation to the Amazon rainforest in Peru. It is really difficult to care for this guy who would abandon his kids in favor of being with this wild cat, but the movie still treats his issues in an honest manner while also dealing with the fraught relationship with his girlfriend.

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There are some gorgeous shots of the rainforest taken with the drones, but for the most part the action is grounded to the house and the immediate surroundings within this forest. This intimacy and small-scale approach helped make the story quite moving and lived-in. The editing is also terrific as the film is consistently involving.