Lamothe travels through Colorado with an ex-drug dealer—who used to live in Alaska-and along I-80 through Nebraska to Council Bluffs, Iowa with a group of young adults who enjoy collecting mushrooms alongside the road.

After days of hitchhiking, Lamothe finally makes it to Carthage but learns that no one in the town will take interviews for his documentary, since they are under contract by Paramount Vantage for Penn's film.

However, Lamothe does get to interview the truck driver who gave McCandless a ride from Carthage to Enderlin, North Dakota, as his life story was not owned by Paramount.

The conceit allows him to explore the concept of wilderness and its influence on the American psyche, as well as its reflection on our cultural landscape; the generation gap as measured by changing rites of passage; and the disparity between independent and Hollywood filmmaking.

"[3] British film critic Neil Young wrote that the film was a "disarmingly fresh, utterly engrossing documentary" in how it addressed "specific details of McCandless's controversial life (and even more controversial demise)" by director Ron Lamothe covering "a surprisingly expansive amount of geographic and thematic terrain as he journeys cross-county – driving, then hitchhiking – in McCandless's footsteps."

In watching the production, Young offered "the film becomes not so much about McCandless or Lamothe (though it's certainly to some degree a portrait of both) but a more general rumination on the ambitions and limitations of the generation to which both belonged (the picture is part-dedicated to 'Generation X') and also a celebration of rural America's more eccentric backwaters.

They note Sean Penn's version makes McCandless into a societal hero who burns his identity and money in a personal quest to exile himself from the material demands and obligations of modern society.

[7] Juneau Empire wrote that release of the Krakauer book and the Penn and Lamothe films "cemented the mystique of Christopher McCandless" and there has been an increase of visitors coming to Alaska to retrace his steps.

They also reported that 25 miles east of the site of the wrecked bus, residents of Healy, Alaska, feared the influx of unprepared visitors "making dangerous pilgrimages for a character portrayed as a spiritual visionary rather than an ill-prepared misfit, as many Alaskans view McCandless."

"[10] Kentucky Educational Television made note that, through the following of Christopher McCandless' footsteps, Ron Lamothe's film "uncovers never-before-seen evidence that sheds new light on the case, and the mystery surrounding his death", directly contradicting Jon Krakauer's interpretations in the book Into the Wild and those made in Sean Penn's film adaption of Krakauer's book.