As unbelievable life trajectories go, British private school outcast to South American cowboy to US primetime TV naturalist to American healthcare saviour must be up there with the weirder ones. The late philanthropist Stan Brock singlehandedly disproves the old F Scott Fitzgerald dictate about American second acts by – starting in 1985 – supplying free medical treatment to millions of uninsured people through his non-profit Remote Area Medical (RAM). Related in this documentary with flashes of Boy’s Own brio, this flip into altruism is all the more remarkable in light of Brock’s borderline-abusive upbringing that pushed him as a young man into a stony self-reliance.
Even in his 70s and ushering in-need citizens into RAM’s mobile clinics, Brock still cuts a strapping, athletic figure. In his heyday, droving on the world’s largest cattle ranch and wrestling anacondas on the savannah of then-British Guiana, he looks like something out of an H Rider Haggard novel. This was the brawny package that made for TV gold as a co-host for 1960s series Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and, briefly, an action movie star in schlock such as 1976’s Escape from Angola.
