Critic Reviews

Though specific to the stories of its central characters, this documentary is as complicated as life. It’s happy, sad and uncertain — genuinely moving and uplifting, yet never reassuring.

Wildcat may have a tiny fraction of Avatar’s budget, and the bad guys—loggers, mostly—remain off-camera. But at heart, it has the same appeal. Get back to nature, put others first, be as good to your family as you can, but let them go their own way.

On its exotic surface, Wildcat might hold all the trappings of a standard wildlife conservation documentary, but lurking beneath the lushly photographed camouflage is a tenderly moving, deeply empathetic human survival story that has as much to do with emotional trauma as it does with the physical.

What an intimate, thoughtful film. I can’t remember the last time I watched a documentary so desperately wanting a happy ending for everyone – human and ocelot.

Wildcat is not a fairy tale. The rigors endured by Mr. Turner’s principal sidekick, an ocelot named Keanu (the actor should be pleased), seem very basic compared to the human subject’s process of rehabilitation. But it does reconcile its realities with the elusive nature of happiness, which for both men and cats can mean what’s within their grasp.

At times Wildcat is a difficult watch, raw and unflinching.

For fans of wildlife documentaries, Wildcat is at least as good as, say, a rerun of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.” (Google it). That is to say: It’s enjoyable while it lasts but fades from the mind soon after, all except for that little piece of a viewer’s heart that holds out hope that little Keanu — and the people who raised him — will one day find the lives they deserve.

While the points where Wildcat goes beyond simply being a feel-good nature documentary and delves into Harry’s mental health struggles are honest, they raise more questions than they answer.

Wildcat remains a tense, diverting study of a man struggling with internal demons while doing his best for an initially helpless creature.

In shaping this narrative, though, Lesh and Frost have left out details that would have deepened and broadened Wildcat.