Rhino Review – Tom Hardy directs David Attenborough on a mission to save the Kenyan rhino | film

HIt’s a rare wildlife success story. The world’s black rhino population has declined to just over 6,000 animals, as rhinos have been pushed to the brink of extinction due to habitat loss and poaching. But conservation efforts have led to the return of rhinos to Kenya, where their numbers are growing in fenced reserves known as reserves that employ local people and keep poachers out.

Tom Hardy provides a slightly distracting narration in this documentary, channeling David Attenborough with a dash of 19th-century aristocratic explorer. The film begins with the fact that over the past three years, 1,900 rhinos have been poached across Africa, but none have been poached in Kenya. At the Borana Reserve, we meet the charismatic ranger, Ramson Kiloko, a man who knows every rhino in his patch by their footprints and the notches on their ears.

But Kenya’s rhinos have become a victim of their own success. The increasing numbers on reserves lead to competition between males who will fight to the death for territory. There is a terrible irony to protecting the rhinos from poachers killing each other, and a plan is hatched to move 21 rhinos 100 miles away to the Luisaba reserve – a high-risk strategy, we are told. A similar attempt ended in disaster as all eleven rhinos were relocated.

But before the rhinos can be relocated, Kenya is hit by a devastating drought for local people whose survival depends on agriculture and livestock. Gangs of bandits are terrorizing farms, and poaching is on the rise. Oddly enough, the film does not explore the threat to endangered species from the climate crisis. I might have been able to live with Hardy a little more in voiceover if he had been given the authority to explain – and perhaps without some of the choices in the soundtrack, including a terrible rendition of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”

● Rhino is in UK cinemas from 28 November.