Film Review: The Hunter (15)

By Siobhan Synnot
Published on 01/07/2012 00:00

Director: Daniel Nettheim

Running time: 102 minutes

****

WHEN you need an actor to go in search of tiger blood, who do you send for? Surprisingly, not Charlie Sheen. Mind you, the Tasmanian tiger is not a real tiger at all but a kind of predatory marsupial with a dog’s body and a crocodile’s jaws. Also known as a Tasmanian devil, it hasn’t been seen alive since 1936, when it used to roam around the Australasian wilderness. So when your quarry is a quirk, why not hire Willem Dafoe as your hunter, since his entire career seems to be based around “why not”, as in “wear a green leotard and chase Tobey Maguire? Why not?”

The film’s terse plotting swiftly establishes Dafoe as a mercenary tracker, hired by a shady biotech corporation to hunt down and kill the world’s last Tasmanian tiger so the company can scoop up its DNA and develop exclusive pharmaceuticals from its skin, hair and blood.

I don’t think we should dwell on the efficacy of this mission; instead, try to focus on how lovely Tasmania looks. Unfortunately the natives aren’t friendly, but a local fixer (Sam Neill) finds him a room with some family friends. The father, a zoologist, disappeared about a year ago, leaving behind a grieving wife Lucy (Frances O’Connor), who self-medicates while living with two kids in a remote cabin.

Dafoe’s character is a rare beast himself, hunted by environmentalists who want to save the tiger and a rival marksman who wants to get to the marsupial first. Meanwhile Lucy and her kids want to fold him into their world as a father figure: but perhaps the hunter is too feral to be tamed.

There’s probably too much going on here, and after lighting the fuse on a bundle of ideas, not all of them catch fire. The Hunter is at its most compelling when it travels light and leaves Dafoe alone on screen. Maybe The Hunter can’t keep its allegorical drama on target, but Dafoe gives a performance that is locked and loaded.

Siobhan Synnot

On general release from Friday