| | The movie delivers many surprising contrasts. The business of high fashion is not where you would expect to find a man like Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins). He is no idler. He is a man of action. He identifies the facts of reality dispationately. ("You're planning to kill me.") He does not allow his emotions to interfere with his reason. He struggles to keep Bob Green (Alec Baldwin) alive because together they have a better chance -- perhaps their (his!) only chance -- for survival. Even after Green makes his move and is fatally wounded, Morse tries to save his life. Is this benevolence or altruism?
Morse could be a man loaded with trivia. Yet, he puts his encyclopedic knowledge to the most practical of uses in the starkest of conflicts. Even without the bear, their chances for survival are slim. The scene where Morse is holding is cellphone and looking out at the endless wilderness that has no cellphone towers says it all: they are alone. Morse keeps his party alive by applying the seemingly useless array of trivia he has accumulated. He tries to make a compass. He can start a fire with a handful of ice. Finally, he figures out how to kill a bear with a stick with himself as bait.
In contrast to Green, supposedly a cold-blooded murderer, Morse is truly up for it all, while Green is pushed by events, carried along by them. The characters live out two different modes of "reacting" to events. Morse actively reacts: he does what needs to be done or tries to. Green does almost nothing. Green's inaction -- failure to put the bloody clothes up in a tree -- causes the death of the injured photographer.
In the business world, Morse must of necessity deal with a barrage of shifting inputs and priorities. He leads his company. Green is a middle manager, a man who has to be told what to do -- and who will take a shortcut if he can get away with it. Morse is always positive and assertive. No matter how much equipment they lose, he will make the best of what they have left.
If Howard Roark and Peter Keating were stranded in the north woods, this is how it would play out.
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