Originally Posted by review

Yet the movie wouldn't work without Hirsch's fervor as Chris. Thanks to Hirsch, you accept without question that a young man defined mostly by openness and intensity can persuade his new friends to respect his philosophic vision, even if they can't see the world through his eyes.

The movie's greatest triumph is its depiction of Chris' bond with an 82-year-old leather worker, Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook). Holbrook, who's 82 himself, matches Hirsch's urgency without showing a bead of sweat. Six decades of acting have brought Holbrook a peerless mastery of limpid thought and emotion.

Originally Posted by John P. Sisk, Professor of English Emeritus, Gonzaga University

But after one hundred days in the wild, with death from starvation looming, he writes in his journal that he is "too weak to walk out, have literally been trapped in the wild." At this point we survivors might say that he has discovered the hard way that the experience of the wild may only be an indulgence that civilization subsidizes as part of its ongoing effort to define and refine itself against the counter efforts of the wild to have it all.