A Breed Apart (1984)
8/10
A brisk open-air movie for nature lovers
11 April 2023
In my opinion, this movie is much better than you'd expect for the low ratings it has received. All the starring actors do a great job here and the casting fits the characters easily.

This is a tale of a of vietnam veteran living as a hermit (Rutger Hauer) in his own private island, taking care of the wildlife and protecting the animals. He confronts some nasty scoundrels (Brion James acting one of them, good old Gaff from Blade Runner!), shooting birds just for the fun of it, scares them away, though they keep coming back for more. There's a rich old bird-egg collector (Donald Pleasance) who hires for a grand price a slick mountaineer (Powers Boothe) to collect eggs for a from an endangered eagle species living on the island. A single mother, working as a shopkeeper in nearby village (Kathleen Turner) feels strongly for the hermit veteran and is always turned down by him, though he cares for her boy and spends time with him in the woods, saving some animals etc.. There are some quite strong emotional scenes for Hauer and Turner and I think it's exactly the unrequited love between their characters that's one major motor here keeping the film interesting.

The pace of this is film probably rather slow for younger audience, but there are plenty of good elements to make this movie worth watching. For instance, the cinematography: it's shot mostly in open air enviroments, and it's also a very bright movie, as it is filmed mostly in sunny daylight. Good character evolution: the characters really contemplate on their actions and their consequences. The plot is simple, quite naive actually, but works fairly good in a certain, innocent mood. There's some mild violence to give a bit of tension and mild nudity for the erotica but nothing too nasty to kill the overall positive vibe of the film.
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