The Hunter

Saw The Hunter (thanks, Basil!) It was an interesting but kind of foregone movie. It's about Willem DaFoe, a mercenary, who is hunting for the last Tasmanian tiger. We open the movie with him accepting this assignment from an accented man who represents a faceless biomedical conglomerate. He talks of security liabilities and "jobs" and is clearly some kind of mercenary. He goes to a remote Tasmanian village which is in the grip of a ecological war of the native loggers vs the foreign "greenies." He rents a room from a local family. We see tie-dye and rustic, wooden furniture. This is an awfully granola-ish place for a heartless mercenary to stay at, we think. Then come the moppets.

The moppets are way too cute and un-intimidated by Willem for this to be a straightforward action film. We know, at this point, that this is a redemption film. This is a bit unexpected, but okay. We get the bonding with the family and the repairing of the generator which symbolically mirrors the repair of the broken family and so on. We see Willem's black heart soften and, although there are twists to keep it interesting, we see see him semi-redeemed by the end. The film is atmospheric and slice-of-life-ish and just a touch political. The eco-politics feels a bit empty. The film gives the loggers a fair shake but of course they are kind of the mini-bad-guys (overshadowed by the puppet-master biochem corp.)

The film was not bad, but not that great either. It does its best to avoid common tropes, but of course is caught up in a redemption story which, while not a bad version/telling of the redemption story, is nothing new. Mainly I'm just really confused as to why the protagonist was a mercenary. Why bother with all of the serial-killer-ish opera on his iPod and the sinister phonecalls and conspiracy? There's some opportunities which spring from the eco-struggle (belonging to neither group, he is menaced by both) but I could believe that a new scientist would find himself being forced to take sides as well. As is, it feels needlessly dramatic and almost pretentious (is The Syndicate supposed to represent Willem's evil nature? or perhaps The Devil?? (on this note actually, Willem's cover-story is that he's hunting Tasmanian devil or, as he calls them, "devils." There's virtually no religious iconography in the film, but I think I've hit on a symbol or something here.))

So the film takes itself a bit too seriously, I fear. It's very moody and very atmospheric. The characters are a bit lacking, but I dug the hunting sequences which are very montage-ish and meditative. The bits involving the mercenary plot seems superfluous and almost schizophrenic to me and that's definitely the film's biggest flaw. That said, the film is definitely not just howlingly bad. It's not a movie I'd recommend to anyone, but if you like a good mood, check it out.