REVIEW - THE HUNTER

I am intrigued by the concept: Willem Dafoe as a solitary mercenary, hunting the potentially extinct Tasmanian Tiger in the wilderness of this singular island. I am concerned by an early development: he is hired by a company, Redleaf, to execute this task - the threat that this will build into a standard corporate thriller is disappointing. Thankfully, this threat never fully materialises, but the film is constructed using so many other stock devices that it barely matters; this is a film that lays its cards on the table early, everything has the feel of predestination, and these familiar elements are developed into precisely the film you expected it to be within the first fifteen minutes. I began to wish that it would, indeed, build into a conventional thriller, as perhaps that might be more entertaining, but director Daniel Nettheim apparently intends to make something more respectable (read: slower), and just when things start happening (as they do a number of times), he strands his plot in favour of a predictable non-romance / family drama. I expect Dafoe signed on less because he liked the script than because he wanted to see what he could make of it...unusually little, in fact - he is at his best here when playing silent and methodical, as the film itself is, and, when it must, such a rote screenplay sounds so crass coming from the mouth of such an esteemed performer. Scenes in the wild are sumptuously shot, and curiously watchable, as Dafoe goes through the processes of accomplishing his task, but they are continuously cut short, as if Nettheim was worried that his audience was growing bored - on the contrary. None of this is particularly groundbreaking, but there is a promising, conventional film nestled against a dull, conventional film here, and I wish Nettheim knew which of these was the stronger.