Synopsis for
Never Cry Wolf (1983) More at IMDbPro »

NEVER CRY WOLF plot synopsis

A Canadian government biologist is sent by his Department of Interior regulators to investigate a more-rapid-decline-than-usual of caribou herds in the Canadian Arctic. His assignment is to discover the reason for the ongoing destruction. Federal polls conducted with trappers and hunters in the region suggest the increase in caribou kills is directly related to Arctic wolves which, apparently, slaughter without purpose. The biologist (Charles Martin Smith as Tyler portraying real-life Farley Mowat) employs a grizzled, renegade Alaskan bush pilot (Brian Dennehy as Rosie) to literally drop him off in the icily-wild study area to research the supposedly murderous habits of wolves. There, alone in the wilderness, with multiple pallets of toilet paper and typically-useless government triple-sheeted forms (and a canoe full of beer slung beneath the fuselage of Rosies ancient, single-engined De Havilland Beaver), he sets up a tent-camp base of operation. After several, and humorous, face-to-face encounters with a small, local wolf family near the camp, he begins to realize their seminal familial structure and rational, conservative life-style reveal them not as the vicious predators of myth but as a close-knit conjugal unit. Soon afterwards, he meets a half-Inuit, half-White trapper named Mike (Samson Jorah) who knows and hunts the area. Mike hesitatingly schools Tyler on local wolf and native tradition and eventually introduces him to a friend, Ootek (Zachary Ittimangnaq), an ancient Inuit who has a peculiar, wolf-like understanding from a heritage-based personal vision. Ootek takes Tyler on a further study of the natural interaction of the two inter-dependant animals via a lengthy journey during the migration of the caribou in the Arctic wilderness. Ultimately, the biologist learns the naturo-pathic gleaning of the caribou by the wolves is necessary for the herds continued survival and that theres another, more sinister carnivore responsible for the caribous decimation.