The Emerald Forest

The Emerald Forest - unfolds in picturesque, still-unexplored South American jungles skirting the Amazon, where dangerous animals and primitive natives defy the efforts of civilization to penetrate the savage wilderness. Powers Boothe, a fine actor generally seen in supporting roles, stars as an American engineer who loses his young son in the Brazilian woods and spends ten years trying to find him. Finally, the two are reunited -- under dangerous circumstances -- but the son, by now having been integrated into a native tribe, shows little interest in returning to America. Director John Boorman (Deliverance) makes the Amazonian wilderness a quasi-mystical place, and underlying the plot device of Boothe's lengthy quest is an almost wistful appreciation for nature in its most basic, untrammeled manifestation. Boorman cast his own son, Charley, as Boothe's missing boy, and the young man performs more than adequately well. But Emerald Forest isn't an actor's movie; the real star of Boorman's film is the forest itself: timeless, alternately tranquil and menacing, and above all awe-inspiring.

 Actual cover on the copy I am selling.