There is something deeply refreshing about an adventure documentary that swaps out the chiselled, bulletproof soldier archetype for a relatable bloke who looks like he could be your mate. Don’t get me wrong – watching seasoned SAS veterans like Bear Grylls or Ant Middleton scale cliff faces is great entertainment and inspiring in its own way. But it isn’t particularly immediately relatable. Their achievements feel engineered by military conditioning; however, an everyday Joe pulling off something audacious feels like pure, unfiltered human spirit.

That is the pulse beating at the centre of Wildboy: Ten Years of Adventure Therapy.

This isn’t a film about an elite operator conquering nature. It is the story of someone grappling with severe ADHD and channelling that restless chaos into an extreme brand of self-discovery. The interesting solutions Brando Yelavich cooks up could only come from a neurodivergent brain firing on all cylinders. For example, who else decides the antidote to mental caos is walking the entire coastline of New Zealand on their own?

At its core, Wildboy isn’t just celebrating miles logged on a GPS – it is a chronicle of overcoming the cards you were dealt. It doesn’t paint Brando as a gym junkie or an endurance fanatic, but as a young man desperate to learn how to live in his own skin. His drive to manage internal hurdles through the raw simplicity of nature is a journey anyone who has ever wrestled with their own headspace can respect. Brando is the walking embodiment of that battle.

But, this documentary is not without narrative clichés. It leans hard on standard, act-by-act survival tropes broken down into the neat “lessons learnt along the way” layout. Yet the sheer weight of the five expeditions holds it all together: circumnavigating the New Zealand coastline, traversing Australia from west to east, confronting the brutal chill of Greenland, trekking the North American wilderness, and looping a completely abandoned Auckland Island.

Each leg functions as a distinct window into a young man maturing in real time.

That said, it certainly isn’t a flawless piece of filmmaking. There are production quirks that feel distinctly amateur, including narration segments that feel far more of a YouTube vlog standard than a cinematic screen. But strangely, the opposite extreme over correction causes more friction with its slick, professionally shot sequences in Australia quickly feeling like an illusion.

When you watch Brando document his New Zealand trek on a shaky GoPro rigged to a selfie stick, the connection is immediate, gritty and intimate. When the film abruptly cuts to sweeping drone shots in the red centre – with Brando pretending he is completely alone despite a camera operator clearly framing the shots – the documentary spell breaks.

Yet what the doco’ lacks in technical coherence, it makes up for in raw charisma. Brando’s infectious personality easily bulldozes through the clunky edits which is fitting given it is an imperfect documentary about an imperfect guy.

What truly elevates Wildboy above typical outdoor feature lengh adventure films is its focus on the mind over the muscle. Most spend two hours glorifying physical suffering; Wildboy explores the wiring of an ADHD brain and what it fundamentally requires to survive. Essentially, it tells you that you don’t walk away simply wanting to pack a rucksack and climb a mountain – you walk away in pursuit of an understand of your own psychological terrain.

For anyone who has ever felt like society handed them the wrong instruction manual, Wildboy cuts straight through the noise. It reframes ADHD not as a deficit, but as a powerful engine that simply needs the right fuel. Finding your lane when the world insists on cramming you into a standard box is exhausting, but Brando proves that the very traits that make you feel out of place can become the catalyst for something extraordinary.

After all, “Life’s too short to live in straight lines”.