Pluskylang Great Film overall

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

merklekranz A generational gap as wide as the Grand Canyon between Marine Veteran, Rod Steiger, and Army deserter, David Huffman leads to unpleasantness in the remote Canadian wilderness. After Steiger, and his three hunting buddies overpower Huffman, and rape his girlfriend, Robin Mattson in an almost comatose performance, this becomes your standard hunters vs. hunted film. In places "Wolf Lake" is very talky, which really drags things out for 105 minutes. A lot of the night photography is barely discernible, and other than Steiger, none of the characters are developed satisfactorily. Very annoying flash forwards, reveal way too much information, and basically ruin any suspense. Average at best, and a disappointment. - MERK

Coventry "Wolf Lake" is obscure 70's exploitation at its finest: raw & moody atmosphere, straightforward action and real manly actors in the roles of hard-headed chauvinist macho characters! Originality might not be this film's biggest trump, perhaps, but it's intense and unsettling from start to finish and brought to an even higher level by the phenomenal performance of Rod Steiger as the embittered War veteran with outmoded patriotic ideals. Charlie, along with three of his obedient and docile buddies, arrive at Wolf Lake for their annual weekend of duck hunting, poker gaming and whiskey boozing. Their usual contact person isn't there, but they meet with the young caretaker David and his sexy girlfriend Linda. They find out David is a fugitive Vietnam deserter, and this happens to be a very sensitive issue for Charlie, because he lost his son there. To him, all deserters are cowards who're to blame for the downfall of America. Charlie taunts and provokes David, but the posse really goes too far during a wild drinking party. And you know how that goes, once you cross a certain line …. there's no way back. "Wolf Lake" is obviously inspired by the 70's trends of (Vietnam) veterans going mental ("Open Season", "Rolling Thunder") and remote backwoods survival thrillers ("Deliverance", "Straw Dogs"). Writer/director Burt Kennedy may not be Sam Peckinpah or John Boorman, but he undeniably manages to keep his movie suspenseful and creepy. The isolated setting is very effective, for starters, and so are Ken Thorne's pounding score and the unnervingly slow pacing. Some political debate sequences are so intelligent and powerful that it's a real shame that the film remained so obscure and unavailable on DVD. The only really annoying thing about "Wolf Lake" is that the plot stupidly spoils itself the entire time by showing brief but revealing images of vital things happening later in the film. What the hell's the point of that?

lost-in-limbo A couple of middle aged war buddies led by Charlie arrive at Wolf Lake for their annual hunting trip, but the guy they were suppose to meet isn't there, but instead there's a young man, David and his girlfriend who are care-taking the resort. When Charlie finds out David was a deserter in the Vietnam War. Hate builds up within, as he lost his son in Vietnam and he takes it upon himself to hand out the punishment for fleeing his commitments. If there's a sorely under-valued and truly forgotten pearler, "Wolf Lake" is one of those sleepers that should have a wider audience. It might be far from perfect, as the project has some teetering problems, but for most part it's an adeptly crafted and hauntingly cerebral picture. The problem area mostly arose from the oddly placed flash forward sequences that cut in and out within the narrative. This aspect certainly spoiled what's about to come and clouded the story with confusion. Feels like we the viewer are missing out on details. Actually it begins with the ending, so it's not terribly surprising in the final outcome. But reading a fellow user's review on the flick, it has made interested in seeing the supposed re-edited "The Honor Guard". As the choppy editing that was worked in was the only thing that dampened the film's edge. Despite knowing what was going to happen, Burt Kennedy's sedately crisp direction was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode with the burning tension and scathing actions coming to the forefront in the closing half. Building up to this riveting game of cat and mouse was made possible by a studiously pressure filled script and a sensationally barnstorming lead turn by Rod Steiger. He really does get into his relentlessly, hot-headed character, but its hard to really despise him as the torment really shows in his face and we watch as it tears him apart. Whenever he and David Huffman's character (David) share the screen watch how intensely gripping their confrontations become and how they feed the film's fire. It's a conflict of two generations just waiting to crack over their opinions of the changing face of America. The bleakly threatening atmosphere spun out from the beautiful lakeside backdrop and isolated woodlands was made to great use and a stirring music score truly does hold a lethal sting in its rhythm. All the rich performances are well grounded and focused. David Huffman as the placid-minded young man David is convincing and a lovely Robin Mattson plays hapless Linda. Jerry Hardin superbly plays the concerned and always consciousness Wilbur. His character is the little voice that Charlie would here if something he was doing didn't sit to well. Richard Herd and Paul Mantee do well in their parts. If your expecting a rough revenge / survival exploitation vehicle amongst a familiar setting. Its starts off with a lot innuendo and then some disturbing moments (like rape) show up. There's way more too it and gladly so. Kennedy fleshes out the situation with a diverse range of traits fusing together with excellent suspense and convicted performances. A couple hiccups can't stop this stimulating potboiler from deserving to be picked out of obscurity. Admirers of Steiger or Kennedy shouldn't miss out on this one. Recommended.

Wizard-8 Given that the movie takes place in Canada, and with producer Melvin Simon having dabbled with the Canadian tax shelter system, you might have reason to believe WOLF LAKE is one of the outputs Canada made during its tax shelter period. Especially since it happens to be a thriller taking place in the backwoods. Surprisingly, though, the credits reveal that the movie was in fact shot in Mexico!While the premise of the movie may seem somewhat familiar, even though I can't think of any movie with a plot that's *exactly* like this one, it does have some exceptional elements, part due to writer/director Kennedy, a veteran western director. (In fact, some parts of the movie do resemble a western.) The production values are really strong, boosted no doubt by the ability to squeeze more value out of a dollar in Mexico, and the camera placing and other directional touches are very professional. Kennedy manages to give this lakeside setting an unsettling feeling, a sense of the threats to come.Kennedy also handles the cast pretty well, though all the actors seem well prepared and up to the challenge. The acting is really good, due in part that Kennedy gives the actors dialogue that fleshes out their characters. Steiger, no surprise, towers over everyone. Though his character is a villain whose eventual behavior can't be excused, you really sense the grief his character has been suffering for years - a grief that has eaten him up and filled him with poison. He's a frightening character even before crossing the line, because his behavior is so believable.The movie is not perfect, though. The biggest flaw is that (at least in the version I saw) there are flashforwards in the first half of the movie that manage to spoil almost *every* major happening in the second half. (The second half has a flashBACK to a previously unseen event, which makes as much sense as those flashforwards!) Also, it takes over half of the running time before the crisis actually starts! Incidently, the movie runs only 87 minutes, which is a pretty short running time. Given that short running time and those confusing edits, there's a chance the movie's slow (though not boring) first half panicked the investors and resulted in some drastic changes. Apparently the movie was re-released a few years later in its original form as THE HIGHEST HONOR, which I would like to see and compare. Maybe some enterprising DVD company could re-release the movie on that format, with each version on a separate side of the DVD. It's not as if the rights for such an obscurity would cost that much.