Category Archives: Action/Adventure

One of the key skills I nurtured as a high school principal was to remain calm in the midst of stress and chaos. I recall the time when, on a class trip to New York, a student got lost at Rockefeller Center for over a half hour or the time students on a subway in New York gave money to a panhandler who responded by shouting that the money given him was not enough and began to threaten them. Thankfully, calm prevailed and both incidents ended happily. The ability to remain calm in the face of adversity is one of the key elements in Arctic, a survival story about Overgard, a cargo pilot whose plane crashes in a desolate Arctic wasteland.

As he waits for rescue, we see he is a problem-solver, not prone to panic. For example, he digs holes in the ice into which he places fishing lines to catch arctic trout. He also runs a distress beacon powered by a hand crank dynamo. Moreover, he clears away snow to create a gigantic SOS sign that can be seen by a plane flying overhead.

When a helicopter appears on the horizon to rescue him, tragically it crashes because of sudden strong winds. The pilot dies; but his passenger, the pilot’s young wife, survives badly injured and unconscious. Overgard carries her to his plane and attempts to provide rudimentary first-aid.

Soon he has to make a choice: stay with the plane and wait for rescue or leave the plane and try to find succor on foot? In the downed helicopter, he finds some food, a propane cooker, some medical equipment, a sled, and a map of the area. He then decides to make the trek to a refuge that appears to be only several days away. He secures the young woman to the sled and begins his journey, motivated by the knowledge that if he does not leave, the woman will surely die without proper medical attention.

Along the way, he faces several challenges. A polar bear terrorizes them, the map is inaccurate and forces him to take a longer route because he cannot surmount a rocky hill while pulling the sled, and he falls into a deep crevasse injuring his leg. Throughout the entire ordeal, he continually reassures the woman that help is only a matter of a day or so away, even though he knows it is not. He also assuages her fear by reiterating that she is not alone. At every step of the journey, Overgard is torn between being cautious and taking a courageous risk, between taking care of himself and altruistically taking care of his injured sled passenger, whom he encourages by telling her she is not alone.

Knowing that someone is with you at a time of crisis is a powerful antidote to despair. I recall an encounter I had during my early years as a synagogue rabbi. While visiting a hospital, I serendipitously met Aaron. He was 89 years old with no family, alone in the hospital. He told me he did not mind dying, but the staff at the hospital does not leave him alone. They insist on doing all they can to keep him alive. He asks me to send a message to mankind: people essentially love one another. He is so impressed with the goodness of other human beings that he breaks down in tears and thanks me for being with him.

Judaism offers several responses to adversity, which are highlighted by Breindy Lazor, a Jewish educator, on the Aish HaTorah website. They include the following: When faced with stark choices, always choose life over death. Help others who are less fortunate than you. Become better, not bitter. Focus on the positive. Take responsibility for your future.

Overgard in Arctic understands these Jewish responses to adversity. In spite of focusing on his own survival, he takes the high ethical road and does his best to save the other as well as himself. His altruism is worthy of emulation.

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 A friend of mine who recently lost his mother shared with me an interesting vignette. When he was a guest at someone’s home, he very much enjoyed the soup that the hostess served. He then asked her for the recipe so that he could share it with his mother, forgetting for the moment that she had died a few weeks before.

The incident reminded me that parents and children possess a powerful bond with one another that emotionally transcends the physical. Even when they are no longer in this world, we still feel connected to them. The powerful connection between parent and child is at the center of Tomb Raider, an adventure in which a child embarks on a treacherous search for a long lost parent, whom most considered dead.

When we first meet Lara Croft, she is working as a bike courier in East London while simultaneously taking college classes and often not making it to the lecture. Although she is the heir to her father’s global wealth, she is fiercely independent and wants to make it on her own.

We soon learn that her father, Richard Croft, was an adventurer who disappeared seven yours before, and Lara is not reconciled to the narratives suggesting he is dead. She is not ready to mourn for him or to move on with her life because she secretly senses he is still alive. When confronted with the opportunity to control all of his wealth, she passes on it and decides to undertake a perilous journey to the site of her father’s last known destination, a mythical island off the coast of Japan.

Her father’s disappearance is connected to the legend of an ancient sorceress named Himiko, who is reputed to be a source of evil and destruction. Her burial plot is on the island; and the legend is that anyone who opens her tomb will unleash a torrent of destruction on the world. Hence, Richard Croft traveled to the island to insure that Himiko’s evil would not spread by getting into the wrong hands.

He bids farewell to his daughter reluctantly, only because he feels that his intervention can prevent a world catastrophe. They part from one another; but the ties between father and daughter, which are rooted in blood and a similar disposition to help the unfortunate, run deep and they survive absence from one another.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a well-known Jewish educator, sheds light on the nature of enduring love in the face of physical separation. He observes that the Biblical Jacob refused to be comforted for Joseph even after he heard that a wild beast killed him and after he saw his son’s bloodied cloak. Jacob, indeed, intuited that Joseph was still alive: “A Midrash gives a remarkable explanation. One can be comforted for one who is dead, but not for one who is still living, it says. In other words, Jacob refused to be comforted because he had not yet given up hope that Joseph was still alive. That, tragically, is the fate of those who have lost members of their family (the parents of soldiers missing in action, for example) but have as yet no proof that they are dead. They cannot go through the normal stages of mourning because they cannot abandon the possibility that the missing person is still capable of being rescued. Their continuing anguish is a form of loyalty; to give up, to mourn, to be reconciled to loss is a kind of betrayal. In such cases, grief lacks closure. To refuse to be comforted is to refuse to give up hope.”

Tomb Raider reminds us that the relationship between parent and child is unique and can withstand many challenges. Separation may test that connection, but the love between parent and child endures.

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I have met a few angry people in the course of my life. One stands out. He was a Civics teacher in my junior high school who played pick-up basketball games with his students. If a student missed a critical shot, he would forcefully slap him on the head. Of course, this was in the 1950s and such behavior was often overlooked by the administration. I played ball with him on occasion; but once I saw him slap the student, I stopped playing with him for fear I might be his next target.

Anger is a dangerous emotion because an angry person is not in control of his emotions and can do some very bad things. The Mustang is about a very angry man who does terrible deeds, but who is given a chance to change his behavior and redeem himself.

The film opens as a herd of wild horses is galloping through the prairie. Suddenly a helicopter’s whirring blades is heard over the quiet landscape. The helicopter is prodding the herd to enter corrals and trucks that are part of a roundup of mustangs by the US government. We are informed that more than 100,000 horses are roaming the countryside, but the government can only manage a small number of them.

In order to determine which horses will find a home, prisoners are given an opportunity to train them for conventional uses. An auction is held at the end of a 5-week training period. The training time serves as therapy for the prisoner who, like the horses, is wild and difficult to tame.

Roman Coleman has been in prison for 12 years after leaving his domestic partner permanently brain damaged in an act of uncontrollable violence. Guilt overwhelms him, and he resists being reintegrated back into society, arguing that “I’m not good with people.” He makes no effort to leave the confines of prison, even though it means his daughter will be left parentless.

While working in a prison maintenance detail, rancher Myles, who runs the prison’s rehabilitation program, assigns Roman to train one of the wild mustangs. Initially, Roman has problems, but slowly he learns to control his own aggressive nature and make progress with his horse, whom he names Marcus.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes about the trait of anger: “In general, Maimonides, like Aristotle, believed that emotional intelligence consists in striking a balance between excess and deficiency, too much and too little. Too much fear makes me a coward, too little makes me rash and foolhardy, taking unnecessary risks. The middle way is courage. There are, however, two exceptions, says Maimonides: pride and anger. Even a little pride or anger is wrong.”

Moreover, he quotes Talmudic sources that speak about the terrible consequences of anger: “One who yields to anger is like one who had worshipped idols (Shabbat 105b). The life of those who can’t control their anger is not a life, they said (Pesachim 113b). Resh Lakish said, When a person becomes angry, if he is a sage his wisdom departs from him; if he is a prophet his prophecy departs from him (Pesachim 66b).

Rabbi Sacks continues: “What is dangerous about anger is that it causes us to lose control. While in its grip, we lose the ability to step back and judge the possible consequences of our actions. The result is that in a moment of irascibility we can do or say things we may regret for the rest of our lives.”

Roman Coleman, by learning to be sensitive to the behavior of a wild mustang, learns to be sensitive to other human beings. Anger no longer dominates his personality; and he desires his future relationships to express forgiveness and love. He is repentant and repentance for him is the gateway to personal salvation.

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