What you want is gone forever.

The Hunter

(2011)

Atmospheric and evocative film from a guy who directed a load of episodes of K9. Willem Dafoe is a mercenary employed by a biotech company to hunt down a (the last?) Tasmanian tiger that has been sighted. He announces himself as a loner from the off but, on arriving in the small logging town that is his base for excursions into the wilderness, he forms unlikely connections with the family he is lodging with, and becomes intrigued by the mysterious disappearance of the father. He also receives a frosty reception from the locals.

Events unfold without apparent urgency; indeed, stretches of the film are near silent, as Dafoe searches for his prey amidst some beautiful vistas. But the story gradually exerts a grip as the hunter re-identifies with his own humanity while engaging in a pursuit he comes to realise is anything but honorable.

There is a tension also in not knowing quite what path the film may take. At times there is a hint of the supernatural that recalls another eco-parable, Edge of Darkness (the ‘80s original, of course); Dafoe takes directions from the drawings of the boy he is staying with. Who, in part of an arresting sequence that culminates in his mother’s arousal from a state of torpor, appears to cause a stubbornly resistant generator to splutter into life simply by placing his hands on it.

****

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