The person in query is Harry Turner, an Englishman in his early twenties who was deployed to Afghanistan when he was 18 years previous and emerged from his tour of obligation with burn marks on his arms and extreme PTSD. Such excessive trauma requires an excessive resolution, and so Harry travels actually to the opposite facet of the world in quest of peace. That will be the Peruvian Amazon, the place Harry follows a equally troubled American Ph.D. pupil named Samatha Zwicker to volunteer at her wildlife analysis and rehabilitation middle, Hoja Nueva. There, these self-described “misplaced souls” flip to the jungle—and one another—for consolation.
The movie by no means reveals how Harry and Samatha met, and it’s not clear till halfway by way of that their relationship is romantic. This was presumably completed to respect the topics’ boundaries; Samantha, specifically, has most likely been to some remedy, based mostly on her potential to speak her emotions clearly. But it surely does elevate some questions on transparency on the a part of filmmakers Trevor Frost and Melissa Lesh, who additionally embody some manipulative scenes with Harry and his household later within the movie. “Wildcat” additionally does little to broaden the narrative round two white youngsters within the Peruvian jungle making an attempt to guard the forest from, properly, Peruvians. Once more, Samantha is the extra acutely aware one right here, however the filmmakers are content material to go away the context of Harry and Samantha’s presence alongside the Las Piedras River unexplored.
As a substitute, “Wildcat” focuses on a distinct bond: Harry’s uncommon, extremely emotional reference to a child ocelot named Keanu. Keanu is definitely the second child ocelot Harry has hand-raised; the primary quarter-hour or so doc his relationship with one other cat named Khan, who (spoiler alert) dies after being shot by poachers mere weeks earlier than he was supposed to return into the wild. Harry takes Khan’s demise extraordinarily laborious, to the purpose the place he turns into despondent and suicidal. One begins to surprise if possibly this younger man is hanging an excessive amount of of his psychological stability on a cat, however that is solely the start.
