Review: The Fugitive Owl Who Captured New York’s Attention

There are moments in life where all eyes, from every walk of life, seem to fixate as one onto a transient phenomenon whose magnetic attraction everyone understands but no one can quite adequately explain. For 12 magical months in 2023–24, that object of our attention was a Eurasian eagle owl.

Wild Inside, Penny Lane’s terrific HBO Films documentary, relives the saga of Flaco, the born-in-captivity raptor who was cut free by vandals from an insufficient Central Park Zoo cage, then evaded capture, learned how to fly and hunt, and charmed a beleaguered city.

Told chronologically but with impressive avian context, the documentary wisely eschews narration and lets us see this majestic apex predator through the eyes, camera lenses, and hearts of the idiosyncratic New Yorkers irresistibly drawn to his fight for survival. Can a caged bird adapt to life on the outside in a big, dangerous city? Is a free life cut short worth more than incarcerated longevity?

These questions still linger, but so does that all-too-rare sense of wonder. Sometimes a metaphor is just too powerful for human language, instead compelling us to stammer, laugh, cry, and make great art. Rest in power, Flaco.