The precarious life -- and struggle to avoid death -- of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle is illustrated beautifully in Nick Stringer’s Turtle: The Incredible Journey, a film that began its own North American sojourn back in 2009 at the Toronto International Film Festival and now spreads its flippers for a rigorous theatrical expansion.

The advent of smaller, better, and higher-resolution cameras has resulted in a reciprocal explosion of stunningly filmed and intimately involved nature documentaries within the last several years. Discovery Channel’s Life comes first to mind. Properly equipped photographers can now gain much closer and less obtrusive access into the secluded world of nature’s most reclusive critters. Hence, securing a theatrical release -- and getting people to buy tickets -- in what is becoming an over-saturated market is now a much more difficult proposition. Though Turtle: The Incredible Journey is a truly stunning and remarkably narrated nature documentary, it’s really difficult to separate it from the clutter and recommend catching it during its theatrical run.

Stringer, with his film crew led by cinematographer Rory McGuiness, chronicles in splendid detail the birth, early life, and return to its Florida birthplace more than two decades later of the loggerhead turtle. The cameras intimately capture young, tender hatchlings as they emerge from the frothy sand, and begin their dangerous 9,000-mile journey, avoiding flesh-hungry ghost crabs, dive-bombing seagulls, and long-line fishermen along the way.

The account, soothingly narrated by actress Miranda Richardson, quickly settles upon one particularly resilient female turtle that manages to scramble through the predatory war zone and make its way to the ocean’s edge.  Once there, the turtle -- I’m so glad they avoided the allure of “Disney-fication” by not naming the turtle -- will ride the strong currents of the Gulf Stream and swim the North Atlantic and Sargasso Seas for years before heading back through the Azores to the Caribbean, guided only by millions of years of ancestral instinct. Only 1 in 10,000 will survive the ordeal, so it is truly an incredible journey.

The turtle’s travels, often exaggerated by the melodramatic narration, end with the film’s money shot, and the most impactful point of the story, which shows our battle-wisened heroine returning to the very beach where she was born… some 25 years earlier!

Yes, Turtle: The Incredible Journey is a gorgeous spectacle and a lovingly created tribute to this cherished endangered species, but a quick flick of the remote will render no fewer than five or six equally fantastic nature docs, each with its own similarly important plea for ecological recognition and preservation. Too, the questionable use of numerous turtle stand-ins, fabricated danger (including cgi-created sharks), and the imposition of human motives onto our reptilian heroine, while necessary to illustrate the twenty-years-in-the-making story, are enough to strain the documentary’s credibility, especially when the genre is of questionable integrity in the first place.

(Released by Hannover House and rated "G" for general audiences)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.