By John L. Moore

Here's the scene: In the dark, a grandfather backs a trailer up to a wire enclosure and uses two corral panels to try to load a large animal with his young granddaughter's assistance. Things go wrong, and the grandfather gets hurt.
 
Sound like a farm movie from the 1950s? Not likely. In this case, the large animal is a marauding grizzly; the grandfather is a character played by Robert Redford; and the 2005 motion picture, now available on video, is "An Unfinished Life." Wyoming writer Mark Spragg based the movie on his novel of the same title and co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Virginia.
 
"An Unfinished Life" tells the story of a young widow (Jennifer Lopez) who flees an abusive boyfriend and seeks refuge with her bitter father-in-law, a Wyoming rancher. Having sold his cattle, his main chore is nursing an old buddy (Morgan Freeman) who has been mauled by the livestock-killing grizzly mentioned previously.
 
The young mother and her child are hardly welcome in Wyoming. The rancher blames her for his son's untimely death in a car accident.
 
The bear, of course, represents the beast of unforgiveness that tends to prowl about in all human souls.
 
That's the symbolism. But the problem with using animals as symbols is they are still animals. In this instance, the rogue bear wanders the streets of a small community, frightening children, mothers and dogs. The rancher tracks it out of town and raises his rifle to shoot it. The rifle appears to be a Model 94 Winchester .30-30, proving that Robert Redford knows as much about shooting big bears as he knew about cowboy hairstyles in "The Horse Whisperer." The Fish and Game people show up, talk him into lowering the rifle, then they sedate the bear and put it in a cage.
 
This movie should've been called "The Bear Whisperer."
 
Even though the grizzly is a livestock killer, a man-mauler and goes brazenly through town in daylight, everyone seems willing to pardon the animal for its "natural" proclivities.
 
The Morgan Freeman character is especially tolerant. He argues the bear was only doing what bears do when he stumbled upon it devouring a baby calf and it charged. Redford's character has major guilt issues for being too drunk at the time to save his friend.
 
This, though, begs the question: If shooting the bear after the fact is somehow ecologically immoral, would it not have been immoral to have intervened in the first place?
 
But, let's not bother Hollywood with philosophical questions. They are more concerned with how Jennifer Lopez looks in a pair of tight Wranglers.
 
The real shame with the movie's political correctness is the abandoning of familial and social responsibilities. Forget about protecting the women, children, old folks and pets of the greater community from an aggressive 1,000-pound beast. The bear is merely a metaphorical challenge for the protagonists. Keeping it a symbol means a granddaughter can be endangered to satisfy one man's altruistic principles and soothe another man's brooding guilt. In spite of its packaging as a story about relationships, this is a tale about individuals and how they must relate to the symbol of wilderness. Read between the lines: If you want the bear to stay alive, you're a good guy. If you want the misbehaving bear to get a dose of reality, you're a bad guy.
 
The conflict, though, is not between good and bad. It's between real and fake.
 
The climatic showdown late in the film - and nothing about this recalls Gary Cooper in "High Noon" - has the bear coming like the Grim Reaper to Morgan Freeman's cabin. Freeman hobbles outside. "I'm not just going to lie down," the old ranch hand whispers to the bear. "Just keep going."
 
Bear whispering! Somehow it works, and the bear realizes its usefulness as a metaphor is over. Perhaps it had read the script. Least of all, it must have read its contract. The bear is "played" by Bart the Bear, a silvertip that's appeared in enough movies to earn a union card.

The bear waddles off into the sunset. Morgan Freeman waxes philosophic. "It looked like there is a reason for everything," he says.
 
A reason for everything? How about the many good reasons for shooting the bear, though not with an open-sighted .30-30. I suggest my Marlin .45-70 with some Garrett 540-grain Hammerheads.
 
Of course, that would make a hunter a hero, and Hollywood will have none of that. In the decade since the last good hunting movie, "The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)," hunters are always the villains. "An Unfinished Life" is hardly the worst of this genre. That dubious distinction has to go to 2003's "The Hunted" with Tommy Lee Jones.
 
The demonizing of the hunter is a modern phenomenon. Historically, the hunter has appeared in fables, myths and legends as the hero. In the original "Little Red Riding Hood," a woodsman kills the wolf and frees Little Red and her grandmother from the belly of the beast.
 
In today's rendition, Little Red would encourage the wolf to eat the old lady - it's only "natural" - the woodsman would be imprisoned for attacking a federally protected species, and Little Red would shed her hood, show her navel rings and start a singing career. The wolf, graced by bureaucracy, would evolve into her agent.
 
The message being sent by modern popular media is that animals, especially wild animals, are always good and mankind is always bad.
 
Let a bear terrorize a community. The bears, after all, were here first.
 
Let a mountain lion attack and kill a jogger. It's only natural for big predators to pursue fleeing prey.
 
Let coyotes roam unmolested in our city suburbs. They're just little dogs.
 
The problem with this simplistic sentimentality - other than its basic lack of common sense - is real disrespect for the animals themselves.
 
First of all, large predators are not cute and cuddly creatures that have the sovereign right to go anywhere and do anything they please. Secondly, individuals within a species vary greatly in temperament.
 
There is such a thing as "rogue" animals. Some become that way, others are born that way, but in any case, they must all be dealt with as individuals.
 
Hollywood is trying to "educate" the American public about wildlife and "An Unfinished Life" is but one of many current examples.
 
But this may change. With predator populations increasing throughout the country, even television and movie producers may soon experience the reality of a predator consuming the family pet. Worse yet, they may know the pain of having a loved one maimed or killed by a predator that has lost all its respect for Man.
 
Who are they going to call for then?
 
It won't be Robert Redford and his undergunned machismo.
 
It won't be an altruistic Morgan Freeman bear-whispering his way through the woods.
 
They will call for a hunter. He may be federally or state employed, but he will be a hunter - a woodsman who will loose Little Red Riding Hood from the bowels of the beast.

John L. Moore
GunHunter Magazine - December 2006