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Review: The Hunter (2012)

The hunter (2012).

Directed by: Daniel Nettheim

Premise: A hunter (Willem Dafoe) travels to Tasmania on behalf of a biotech company to hunt a species believed to be extinct. While there he bonds with a local family and finds himself caught in a conflict between environmentalists and loggers.

What Works: The Hunter is a thoughtful film. Channeling movies like The Deer Hunter and The American , The Hunter is a movie about a man placed in a situation and trying to do the right thing when it isn’t always clear what the right thing actually is. The story places its lead character, played by Willem Dafoe, in a difficult situation as he is given a task to accomplish but finds his assignment conflicting with other priorities. While hunting his quarry, the title character stays with a broken family; the father is missing, the mother is paralyzed with grief, and the children are uncared for. Dafoe’s character steps into this void and takes on the role of caregiver, providing for the children and restoring the mother to health. In this, The Hunter has some very strong scenes in which the title character develops a relationship with the children. The film and the character do not go out of the way to make a point about doing the right thing or milk the pathos appeal of these scenes. Dafoe is very good in that respect; he gives a naturalistic performance and his interaction with the children has a lot of reality to it. That naturalistic quality extends throughout the rest of the film. The Hunter is a very well made picture; the filmmakers photograph the wilderness in a way that captures the cold and the grit of the wild and its soundtrack uses a minimal amount of score, emphasizing the natural sounds of the setting. This quiet quality about The Hunter makes it a pensive film but it moves along well enough and does not get saddled in existential sidebars.

What Doesn’t: The Hunter is a good film but it is not a great one. To start, it is unclear what the protagonist wants; similar films like The Grey give the lead character the goal of survival and test his abilities against various obstacles. The Hunter does give its lead character a task but that task is largely disconnected from the substance of the middle of the film. Most of the second act of the story is about the relationship between the title character and the kids and although those scenes are heartwarming it is unclear why the story spends so much time on the domestic issues. That is especially problematic because the way the film resolves that relationship is very unsatisfying and even something of a copout. The Hunter also suffers from incomplete subplots. The relationship between the hunter and the children’s mother doesn’t go anywhere and the ongoing conflict between the environmentalists and the loggers occasional percolates but then doesn’t come to a meaningful conclusion.   Bottom Line: The Hunter is a worthwhile film for those who enjoy wilderness tales. It leaves too many of its narrative strands unresolved but it does have some impressive filmmaking qualities and a very good performance by Willem Dafoe.

Episode: #384 (April 15, 2012)

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Movie Review | 'The Hunter'

Anger and Hate Devour a Man and His Country

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By Stephen Holden

• Jan. 3, 2012

The clammy chill that pervades “The Hunter,” the fourth feature film by the Iranian director Rafi Pitts , seeps under your skin as you wait for its grim, taciturn protagonist to detonate.

That character, Ali (Mr. Pitts), is a lean, unsmiling 30-something loner with murder in his eyes who delivers his few words in a near monotone. He symbolizes the seething mood of a country that the film suggests is a powder keg of discontent and alienation. Surveying the urban sprawl around Tehran, the camera examines a smoggy jungle of power lines, belching smokestacks and congested highways: a Middle Eastern Los Angeles on a bad day.

The countryside, with its bare trees and heavy mist, is just as forbidding. An extended scene of Ali and two police officers pummeled by a drenching rain while lost in the woods distills the film’s ominous mood. All of this is photographed with a sullen beauty, the characters often seen as tiny figures in the distance.

Ali, when first glimpsed, is applying for a job as a security guard at an auto assembly plant, having just been released from prison after he served time for an unspecified crime. When he requests a daytime shift so that he can spend evenings with his wife, Sara (Mitra Hajjar), and their 6-year-old daughter (Saba Yaghoobi), he is icily rebuffed and told he is lucky to have any job.

One day he returns home to find his wife and daughter missing. At a police station, where he endures long, tedious waits, he is eventually informed that Sara was accidentally shot to death in the crossfire between the police and protesters at a political rally that is sporadically heard in the background. There is no information about his daughter.

After scouring the streets while waving a picture of her and searching in an orphanage and at a school, he is called to the morgue to identify a child’s body, which turns out to be his daughter’s. He registers only the tiniest flicker of emotion. He then loads a rifle and drives to a hillside overlooking a highway, picks out a police car, aims and fires, killing two officers.

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Pitts had no plans to play the lead in his own film, and I learn from Variety that he "was forced to take on the main role when his leading actor proved unreliable." He hardly feels like a replacement. He has an uncanny presence. With his severe, tense face beneath a dark brow, he suggests Daniel Day-Lewis . In early scenes, he shares the happiness of his wife and little daughter ( Mitra Hajjar and Saba Yaghoobi ), but then he comes home to an empty apartment and learns only after a long and frustrating wait that they have been identified as victims caught in a crossfire between insurgents and police.

They were not participants in whatever was happening. They were in the wrong place. When Ali learns the news, there's no emotional outburst. He remains contained and almost ominously silent as he identifies his wife's body but cannot identify a little girl in the morgue. He visits the scene of their deaths, with chalk body outlines still on the pavement, one smaller than the other. He parks for days outside his daughter's school, as if she would come smiling down the stairs.

Before this happened, sometimes he would take a hunting rifle into a forest outside Tehran. Now he returns to a vantage point overlooking an expressway and fires at a police car. How he is identified as the shooter is unclear, but he is, and the second half of the film involves a police manhunt that comes down to him being led in handcuffs through the trees by an unhappy rookie cop and his bullying superior.

You are left free to determine what their long time in the woods represents. Or the personality conflict between the two cops. When they become lost while trying to bring their prisoner in, their three fates become linked. This dilemma won't develop as you may expect, and the more you consider what happens, the more labyrinthine and suggestive are the political undertones. As I followed step by step the unfolding of the ending, I could see how the plot makes perfect sense in a sinister way that adds one brilliant additional twist.

Ali, the hunter, has only a handful of words in the last half of the movie, and not many more before his family disappears. His existence supplies his dialogue. He is a man whose family's fate is not of much significance to the police bureaucracy, and whose life itself has no meaning except in his anguished actions. There is a deep irony in the scenes involving the police. And many long silences in which we're free to imagine his thoughts.

" A Separation ," another recent film from Iran, also centers on a married couple and their daughter. They have many thoughts and many words to express them. The solitary hunter here has been pushed outside his society's courts of appeal. His action itself, when he fires on the highway, takes lives of people unknown to him. By the same token, no one targeted his wife and daughter. They died as a result of the nature of their society. Nothing can be said.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Release details.

• Release date: Friday 6 July 2012
• Duration: 102 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Daniel Nettheim
• Screenwriter: Alice Addison, Wain Fimeri
• Willem Dafoe
• Frances O'Connor
• Callan Mulvey

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Dan the Man's Movie Reviews

All my aimless thoughts, ideas, and ramblings, all packed into one site, the hunter (2012).

Martin (Willem Dafoe), a skilled mercenary is sent to the jungles of Tasmania to bring evidence of a creature known to be extinct, the famed Tasmanian Tiger.  Posing as a scientist, he arrives at the house of a family whose father has become missing hunting for the same animal.

Nature thrillers aren’t the best kind of thrillers out there. ‘The Grey’ was pretty good but usually, these kinds of thrillers just end up being uninteresting without any real thrills. This is a little bit in between.

I actually don’t even think you can categorize this as a thriller because it’s basically all about a man finding something inside of himself to give the film this character-based drama feel, but then have this thriller premise build around it as well. Director Daniel Nettheim did a great job here with setting the feel and atmosphere of this flick. Many scenes are just dedicated to total silence where we see Dafoe in the woods making traps, setting up, and doing all of this other cool, hunting stuff but all to the sounds of nothing else other than the birds and wind. There’s a very placid feel to this whole film that may take awhile to get used to but it still works and keep you interested as to what’s going to happen next with this dude.

Let me also not forget to mention that this film is very beautiful to look at but not in a pretty way. I have never seen Australia look this certain way in a film before than it does here. There are so many shots of the dangerous and dark forest that Dafoe goes into just about everyday and they add a lot more to the mood than anything else. I never thought that this forest was dangerous but then again, I never thought it was a happy place with Care Bears skipping and dancing everywhere either. Just a very mysterious and strange place to be in. Thanks cinematography!

Despite how good the cinematography and pace may be, the film still has its problems when it tries to be a character-based drama. Everything in the woods worked, but when Dafoe started hanging out with this family and getting attached to them, the film really does falter into just trying to finding more ways to have us sympathize with this dude more. Since the movie is so quiet and placid, the scenes that are supposed to be very emotional and touching don’t do either of these things. They are just sort of there to provide more of a background for our dude and even though I don’t mind a film trying to develop its character no matter how mysterious or strange he may be, at least try to do it in a way that isn’t so obvious.

Other than the moments in the forest, this film also doesn’t have any real tension. The real life tension between Green activists and tree loggers is here but they show up only to bring more tension to this flick and it doesn’t do much at all. It’s an important rivalry to show, and maybe a lot better to show in a documentary, but here, it seems unneeded as if the film couldn’t rely on the scenes in the forest to bring tension to this flick. Damn, I never realized how much I liked the scenes of just Dafoe in the forest.

Willem Dafoe is definitely the right choice for this quiet and mysterious character Martin. Dafoe in almost flick he does, has an engaging screen presence where you just can’t take your eyes off of him and you want to know more and more about him, which this film tries to do but sadly fails. Martin doesn’t talk much but you can see all of Dafoe’s emotions pour right through the looks on his face and proves that he’s one of those rare actors that can say plenty without saying anything much at all. Great performance from Dafoe and any lesser actor would have just totally made Martin one of those strong, silent types.

Frances O’Connor is pretty good as Lucy, the chick that Martin comes to live with, and gives her character a very deep sadness to her even though she does start to lighten up a bit by the end. Sam Neill is also good as Jack, a guy who seems a lot more mysterious than Martin. Neill is great at playing these very sly characters that you just don’t know if you can trust or not and he’s no different here even though this character does end up being a little bit more human by the end then you expect. Also, it’s great to finally here Neill in his Australian accent once again. Small cast, but effective when needed.

Consensus: The Hunter features a very slow, but melodic pace, with great performances from the small cast and beautiful cinematography. However, when it steps away from the forest, the film tries too hard to get emotional on us and it just ends up being more forced than anything else.

6.5/10=Rental!!

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13 comments.

Sam Neill is actually a New Zealander!

Oh shoot! I feel like an ass!

I wanted to see this and it fell off my radar–thanks for the reminder! Sounds like it is worth the watch…nice review!

It’s worth watching but don’t go crazy for. Thanks!

This is was in my ‘may be’ list, but now after reading your review, it is bumped up to ‘watch’ list. Willem Dafoe is great and so is you review.

Dafoe is great and definitely one of the best things about this flick. Thanks!

Good review Dan. Sounds like it’s a bit mediocre but still worth a watch

It’s nothing special, but good. Thanks Steve!

I agree. I didn’t think it was a bad movie, but couldn’t decide on a tone and what kind of movie it wanted to be. I wish this had focused on the hunting and wildnerness aspects more, rather than his time staying with the family. Good review, Dan!

It could have been more devoted to what he was doing in the wild rather than with that familia, but still a good watch none the less. Thanks brah!

Just about what I expected. I had a feeling this would be very picturesque and there would be some aspects involving his isolation but it was very difficult to tell where this movie was going, if it was really going anywhere.

Looks interesting.

Very good review, spot on. I’m glad you brought up National Geographic. When I was watching, it seemed like a documentary on National Geographic that just happened to have Willem Dafoe in it.

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Movie Review: The Hunter (2011)

• Mariusz Zubrowski
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> April 16, 2012

Tracking through the wilderness.

One of my closest friends goes on regular hunting trips with his family. Nothing earth shattering there — they, as most hunters, tend to hunt for Bambi’s extended family for sport or food (although I found it particularly strange that, although he’s not a taxidermist, he once kept a deer head in his refrigerator for an extended period of time). The protagonist in Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter , hunts for neither of the aforementioned reasons — he’s a highly skilled, for-profit hunter whose game is a tiger long thought to be extinct.

Hiding in the untamed wilderness of Tasmania, the beast’s genetic code is said to hold the secret to a dangerous weapon. Willem Dafoe plays Martin, a mercenary contracted by a shady biotech corporation to track it down, extract some samples, and send the species into oblivion. However, his militant sense is tested when he becomes involved in the lives of a family he’s forced to board with. In the company of a depressed widower, Lucy Armstrong (Frances O’Connor), and her two children, Sass and Bike (played by Morgana Davies and Finn Woodlock), he quickly fills the void their father — an outspoken environmentalist who disappeared mysteriously — left behind. By doing so, Martin adopts the family’s many enemies.

The story is based on Julia Leigh’s 1999 novel of the same name. Upon release, the book was met with mixed reactions. Some critics, like Elizabeth Dean and Christopher Bantick, pointed out her “naive tendency toward stereotyping.” Others, however, appreciated the green-friendly themes and were satisfied with calling it great “eco-text.” Both camps, however, doubted that the author had ever even visited Australia; such is not the case with this film adaptation.

The Hunter was shot on location. Reportedly, the crew had to deal with leeches during production — a small sacrifice for the lush locations. The back-country sounds and a darkened color scheme complement the actor’s silent performance. Completely apathetic and uninterested in the local strife, the man is most natural devising traps and melting into the greenery. Dafoe captures the complexities of his character authentically and, despite being a renowned arthouse star, he feels natural amongst the earth. This is the actor’s best performance since his work on Lar von Trier’s “ Antichrist .”

Taking aim.

Unfortunately, the drama with Lucy and her kids isn’t as involving. These characters aren’t handled well and their scenes feel rushed and underdeveloped. Martin’s brief relationship to the former is too sentimental and predictable. On the other hand, the dynamic between him and Bike — a strong, but wordless, bond — has the right idea and fits in nicely with the overarching theme, yet it’s still too breezy.

While it’s a film that takes place mostly outdoors, The Hunter is a story of internal struggle. The source material describes Martin as a man who “can see and hear and smell what other men cannot; the man of delicate touch and sinuous movement; the man who can find his way through the bush by day and night.” Alice Addison’s eloquently written — albeit dramatically uneven — screenplay and Nettheim’s brilliant direction nicely reflect the novel’s refrained emotion and workmanship. That notwithstanding, the uncompromising subtlety should divide audiences between those not so enticed by its reserved atmosphere and those caught between its narrative bear trap.

Tagged: mercenary , tiger , wilderness

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Willem Dafoe is a man engulfed by the wilderness in the biocentric, Australian drama The Hunter . Wonderful cinematography and a thought-provoking existential subtext make this film, from director Daniel Nettheim , compelling despite it not fully exploiting the vivid atmosphere of its raw, natural setting.

A supreme actor, Willem Dafoe has always had a screen presence that is strangely alluring. The basic synopsis of The Hunter – Dafoe stepping in to the fearsome wild to hunt down the mythical Tasmanian tiger – makes for a tantalising prospect. It could be an opportunity for an opaque character study of a tormented soul thrown deep in to some sort of misty abyss; that would not be everybody’s cup of tea, too strong for some, but it would promise an extreme, temperamental film. But, in actuality, The Hunter has a more linear – but still foreboding – mood, based on the complexities of a broad narrative rather than a straight-forward battle of Man versus Nature.

Martin (Dafoe) is a mercenary and professional hunter who is given the task by a shadowy corporation to find the Tasmanian tiger – a fox-like creature believed to be extinct. He is introduced via his meticulous routine of taking a bath with a grooming kit perfectly aligned by the basin as classical music blares from an iPod dock. Like a hybrid of a tepid James Bond and Bear Grylls, it is evident that Martin has a calculated personality despite his expertise in muddy, outdoor pursuits.

Fronting as an academic researching the Tasmanian devil, the aloof Martin is holed up at a run-down family home that acts as a base camp for his expeditions in to the bush. It is Martin’s relationship with the family that provokes warmth in an otherwise cold persona. He looks after the two children of the lethargic mother (Frances O’Connor) who haplessly awaits the return of her missing husband. The family of conservationists moved to the area to protest against tree logging which has caused violent tension in the town. The locals, including the furtive Jack (Sam Neill), recall the redneck antagonists of John Boorman’s Deliverance .

The narrative takes an unexpected turn that genuinely stirs empathy, but the moments of Dafoe alone in the wild are the most captivating with the Tasmanian landscape beautifully captured. A Natty Bumppo for the twenty-first century, Martin parades the environment with stealthy consideration. As he begins to contemplate the life of the animal he stalks, which may be the last of its kind – destined to hunt alone and wait for death – he realises a parallel with his own existence. Conflicted and less detached from humanity due to his interaction with the family he begins to re-evaluate his circumstance, but the hunt is already on.

Spurred on by Willem Dafoe’s outstanding performance, The Hunter reflects on Darwin’s refrain ‘the struggle of life’ with a clinical tone. The figurative significance of nature is a constant but its potential is never fully realised in order to create a truly spectacular atmosphere. Still, there’s more than enough to genuinely provoke thought and invest emotion – other than the gorgeous scenery that will have you googling the best way to get to Tasmania.

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There's Finally Good News For Sony's Kraven the Hunter Movie

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God of war ragnarok made one feature shine and its sequel should push that envelope further, rumor: x-men reboot might reintroduce two familiar x-men characters.

• Kraven the Hunter film has finally given fans a reason to pay attention with its R-rating confirmation and star-studded cast.
• The commitment to an R-rating sets Kraven the Hunter apart from the rest of the Sony Spider-Man spinoff franchise.
• While the R-rating is a great boon for the project, it might not be enough to save Sony's Spider-Man universe at this point.

While the upcoming Kraven the Hunter film has received the same generally unoptimistic reception that the rest of the Sony Spider-Man spinoff franchise has earned up to this point, the project might have finally given fans a reason to pay attention.

Kraven the Hunter is one of Spider-Man’s most fearsome foes in Marvel Comics, with a long history and a rich backlog of interesting arcs featuring him. Thanks in part to his more grounded superhuman abilities and motivations, the character was prime pickings for an adaptation in Sony’s superhero franchise, which capitalized on characters like Venom and Madame Web, who are related to Spider-Man and thus fall under Sony’s license from Marvel. These tangential projects have not been met with as much success as the Sony-MCU collaboration effort that led to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Home trilogy, and Kraven the Hunter would tease a new take on the character’s origins to little fan applause.

Borderlands fell short of satisfying critics, as evident in its Rotten Tomatoes score.

While this upcoming movie is Kraven’s first and long-strived-for theatrical debut , a recent confirmation has set the debut up to be a significantly better one. While the idea of an R-rating for the film has been floated around the talk cycle for a while now, Comicbook now reports that the mature rating is officially in place for Kraven the Hunter . The confirmation has been a long time coming, and the film’s star has been quite adamant about it on previous occasions. "Anyone who's familiar with comics and the character of Kraven the Hunter knows that he is a fierce hunter — a skilled, highly-trained killer," star Aaron Taylor-Johnson previously remarked. "So I think now's a good time to answer the Internet's biggest question: Will it be rated R? F— yes, it's going to be R."

This commitment to the R-rating comes after a multitude of delays that many took as a sign of bad tidings, with the expectation that Kraven the Hunter would be Sony’s worst outing yet with the Marvel IP. However, this news changes that narrative, as it gives a higher baseline for fan interest going into the film. This will probably be a major point in the marketing going forward as the project, which also features Ariana DeBose as love interest Calypso and Fred Heichinger as fellow Spider-Man rogue the Chameleon, nears its December release date.

At this point in the Sony franchise, it’s debatable whether Kraven the Hunter was the right place for an R-rating . Sony’s Venom film series could have arguably done a lot more with an R-rating, even more so for the rest of the franchise. In fact, there’s a case to be made that every single project in this franchise should have been R-rated from the beginning to really distinguish itself from the MCU and give the creatives more to work with. Whether or not this would’ve made a major difference to the quality of a film like Madame Web is debatable, but it would’ve probably drawn more fan interest in the meantime. With Kraven the Hunter being the last of the Sony Spider-Man projects with a confirmed release date, there might be hope for it to set the stage for future projects with an impactful theatrical showing. The timing of the confirmation announcement might also be to capitalize on the buzz surrounding Deadpool & Wolverine’s record-breaking R-rated run.

It’s still very much up for debate if Kraven The Hunter can save Sony's Spider-Man universe at this point. While the R-rating is certainly a great boon for the project itself, it might be too late to fix the damage caused by Madame Web and the general apathy around even the most well-received projects outside of the Spider-Man Home trilogy. With Tom Holland becoming more and more of an MCU asset, there’s very little one antihero can do to save the day here.

Kraven the Hunter is currently set for theatrical release on December 13, 2024.

Spider-Man is one of the biggest names in entertainment today. The superhero first appeared in the Marvel comic Amazing Fantasy #15 before becoming a leading figure in the Marvel comic-book universe.  Spider-Man has also featured in numerous films and a plethora of video games, most notably Insomniac Games' Spider-Man (2018) and Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

God of War Ragnarok takes baby steps in one key mechanical direction, and its follow-up should continue to walk down this path.

Source: Comicbook

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