Bold Native offers a lot for viewers to explore: good characters, intensive dialogue, dramatic editing, and a story line which dives deeply into a subject often seen as too extreme for the general public.
This film will inspire many important conversations, both amongst seasoned activists discussing tactics, ethics and methods, but more importantly amongst the uninitiated: those who have never considered animal cruelty as being something related to our food and lifestyle choices.
This has been a good year for films involving compassion towards animals, with the success of The Cove driving people towards thinking about animal cruelty in ways they might not have before. Still, people in the USA can watch that movie from afar in a way, thinking all throughout that animal cruelty is something which happens "over there" and not in close proximity to the comforts and norms of our own day to day lives.
What Bold Native does is to make the issue of animal cruelty immediate and engaging, by offering us a narrative about characters that are relatable and likable, in a story line that is believable, while at the same time showing throughout genuine footage of actual animal barbarism that isn't an overbearing onslaught like a propaganda video. Instead this intense footage is used sparingly and tastefully amidst the narrative, shocking to those who might be unaware of what is truly going on behind the food and clothing industries, and horrifying enough to hammer home the point that animal cruelty is happening all around us, everyday. The film poses a challenge to us: that if what we see is abhorrent and if we feel compelled to respond, that it is up to us to engage the issue directly, in whatever capacity we deem appropriate.
This is an undeniably challenging film.
