A different way of telling a story

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

MOTHER LODE is an all but forgotten tale of survival in the wilderness and the hunt for a golden treasure. I'd never heard of it before I saw it was on TV so I thought I'd give it a go; I quite like Charlton Heston when he's at his most bombastic so I thought I'd see what he was like here.The good news is that Heston is the best thing in the film and his larger than life portrayal of a mountain man is hugely entertaining. It's a shame that the rest of the film can't match, really, as MOTHER LODE is saddled with a slow-moving plot and some rather unlikeable protagonists. Nick Mancuso and Kim Basinger play characters who seem self-centred and indeed rather selfish and I couldn't warm to them despite their various misadventures. Basinger's screaming soon becomes annoying, too.What MOTHER LODE does have going for it is some stunning outdoor location photography of the British Columbian wilds. A lot of the aerial shots are simply breathtaking and truly bring to life this rather neglected part of the world (at least neglected when it comes to cinema). It's certainly an amiable enough watch overall, containing a little of that early '80s spirit of adventure that infused the likes of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, although this is much darker and more realistic, and not as entertaining. But it'll do.

My husband and I have always loved this film. The scenery is beautiful, and Kim Basinger and Charlton Heston were pretty good. It was the first film I'd seen Basinger in, and she made an impression.We always thought it should've gotten more attention than it did. It's a gripping adventure tale with Basinger and Nick Mancuso, who also does a fine job, cast as a young couple set off to the Northwest to search for a missing friend. That friend was looking for gold.Pretty soon, they're on the hunt themselves, befriended by a quirky old miner played by Heston. He plays the menacing, enigmatic character masterfully. You can never quite tell if he's just sort of quirky from having been alone so long, or if he's dangerously unstable.This movie has held up well over time.

Mother Lode features Charlton Heston in two roles, and was scripted by his son Fraser C.Heston. It also features an early screen role from Kim Basinger. The cast is rounded off by Nick Mancuso, a pretty reliable actor who always seems to turn up in weak films such as Nightwing and Death Ship.The plot follows Mancuso and Basinger as they fly over the wilderness of Britsh Columbia in a small light aircraft. The plane crashes in a lake in the middle of nowhere and the twosome find themselves cut off from civilisation. They stumble across a mysterious old Scottish miner who lives in a remote mountain shack and seems to be digging around in the hills for something. He seems to be a nasty type, and gradually they learn that he is in search of gold.... indeed he is so obsessed with his unfound gold that he will kill to keep it a secret.The film is pretty to look at during the early passages, especially when the young couple are flying in their plane and the action is beautifully and panoramically captured by the camera. But the later scenes are undone by darkness, with far too much action occuring in virtual pitch black darkness which makes it tough to see exactly what's going on. Heston gives a wild and rugged performance which doesn't weigh up with the rest of the film, and Basinger is a bit bland in her part. This is OK for a rainy day, but nothing more than that.

Though this review is written 18 years after the fact, this film remains among the top of my all time favorites. Introducing the great wilderness in the manner portrayed within the story was breath-taking and this introduction was significant in eventual Canadian and Alaskan adventures. When films can have such an impact on a person, they cannot help but remain close to the heart. The story was fun & exciting and very well played, yet, hats are off to the big screen impact this film portrayed of the Canadian Wilderness.