“Racing Extinction” has many grisly examples of mankind’s impact on the natural world, but one of its most affecting touches is a snippet of birdsong.
The movie considers the way various species have been driven to non-existence in the last few decades, among them the Kauai O’o bird. A research unit at Cornell University catalogues wildlife sounds, and they recorded the song of the O’o — that is, the very last one — before the type vanished in the late 1980s.
It’s a plucky little cry, made all the more poignant by the fact that no other O’o is around to answer it. Later we see footage of people killing manta rays and a Hong Kong rooftop loaded with thousands of shark fins, but that extinct sound really brings home an overwhelming sense of absence.
The movie doesn’t always hit that note. “Racing Extinction” is from the director of “The Cove,” Louie Psihoyos, and where that Oscar-winning 2009 film mostly had a single powerful focus (the capture and killing of dolphins in Japan), this one touches on a series of interesting but scattered environmental crises.
Most are compelling, for sure: lush photography of blue whales, that largest-ever of the planet’s creatures; a primer on how the methane produced by livestock is a giant creator of carbon dioxide; close-ups of dazzling plankton, the teeny unromantic creature upon which the entire food chain depends.
Psihoyos also serves up some “Cove”-style undercover stuff, as he and his colleagues take hidden cameras into black-market fish smuggling factories and restaurants that illegally serve whale meat.
The director is a former “National Geographic” photographer, and embedded in the film is an intriguing argument about the power of images to change minds and open eyes. The success of “The Cove” supports that argument, and “Racing Extinction” also excerpts a recent short film (featuring NBA great Yao Ming) that has apparently been widely influential in getting fewer people to eat shark-fin soup.
This idea culminates in Psihoyos collaborating on big-scale attempts to project footage of endangered (and extinct) species in public places.
As an example of image-dissemination, “Racing Extinction” is skillful, right down to the evocative (but nonstop) music by J. Sharp. It can’t match “The Cove” for focused passion, but maybe it can help delay the next O’o from annihilation — which would be enough.
“Racing Extinction” (three stars)
The director of the Oscar-winning “The Cove” returns with another story of how we mistreat other species. The movie doesn’t have the single, burning focus that “The Cove” had, but the scattered storylines do contain some poignant stories (and a few compelling hidden-camera undercover revelations about shark-fin smugglers and manta ray hunters).
Rating: Not rated; probably PG-13 for subject matter
Showing: SIFF Uptown
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