Reviews

As a veteran of nine expeditions down the Grand Canyon I was skeptical of whether one would get the feel of what the Canyon is like in its more remote areas considering that it wasn't filmed there. I'm happy to report that with the overview shots of the actual Grand Canyon coupled with what seems to have been carefully selected non-Grand Canyon sites to shoot this movie, I completely recognized the Grand Canyon I'm so familiar with. The slot canyon the honeymooning couple explored not long after the opening scenes suggested strongly to me the slot canyon at the end of Deer Creek just before the creek plunges over Deer Creek Falls into the Colorado River and other locations reminded me of some of my other favorite Grand Canyon sites like National Canyon, Shinumo Creek (near Bass Trail) and the Silver Grotto of Shinumo Wash (not technically in the Grand Canyon proper, but upstream of it in Marble Canyon, still in GCNP). So for someone seeking a vicarious look at what the more remote parts of the Grand Canyon might look like you should appreciate this film for that.

(spoilers to follow)

That said, the only thing I can say about the plot devices is that the only people who could be portrayed making the horrendously bad decisions might be a clueless couple from a big Mid- Western city who've never been in the wild before. They are made to make serious error in judgment after another until you almost feel as though there's no way that they had ever had any hope of getting out alive from the outset. I almost felt as though the movie makers were making a caricature of clueless city dwellers caught in the wild in over their heads.

But if the bad decisions that seemed almost calculated to doom the couple weren't unrealistic enough of a plot device, the main villains of the movie were. The early days of the Grand Canyon as a park saw a program of predator elimination that resulted in an explosion of the deer population on the Kaibab Plateau that lead to a very harsh lesson in trying to control nature by artificial means as the deer population subsequently crashed. The apex predators including puma and Mexican gray wolves were all but completely eliminated from the Canyon and recent efforts to re-introduce the Mexican gray wolf have thus far not been successful. In the nine trips I've made into the canyon representing over 4 calendar months total time I've never seen or even heard the presence of wolves in any part of the canyon. Thus the lack of the presence of the animals in the Canyon makes the portrayal of a pack of vicious wolves attacking the couple very unlikely, but even less likely is the possibility that the species that might have been encountered there by some slim chance, the Mexican gray wolf, much smaller than their Canadian cousins and a rather shy animal around humans, would have chosen to mount a persistent assault on a pair of adult humans.

I rate this movie a 5, an average of the superlative effort to realistically paint an accurate picture of the splendor of the Grand Canyon I love, contrasted against the abysmally misguided plot devices that doom what story there is to enjoy about the movie. There are better venues to see the Grand Canyon for its scenery and splendor, any number of beautifully shot documentaries, some of them by the GCNP itself. And if that only whets your appetite for what there is to see, go there yourself in person, that's why we have National Parks in the first place. But if you do go, take it from me that you'd have little to worry about from the so far non-existent wolf population in the Canyon.

This touching movie is about what may be the best loved figure from Idaho history. Her ranch, now a members only recreational club, is just over 40 miles from where I'm writing this. The movie takes considerable license with the actual facts of Polly Bemis' life, but that is seldom the point of a fictionalized movie based on a novel that is based on a true story anyway. Much of this movie winks and nods at the history, but packages what there is of it into a very charming and moving portrayal of the difficulties of life for Chinese immigrants on the Idaho frontier, not on the cattle producing prairies, but in the gritty gold mines of Warren and Florence in the mountains of 19th century Central Idaho. The Chinese Exclusion Act caused much upheaval and misery among the Chinese immigrants as was depicted in the movie, in which the Bemises were caught up. (spoiler alert) Although the movie ends just as life is beginning on the Main Salmon River in Central Idaho, much of the charm of Polly Bemis' life that has made her such a beloved figure in Idaho history had yet to occur. That might be a good idea for another movie to follow up this one.