Mesmerizing Performance From Willem Dafoe Carries ‘The Hunter’

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HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.0/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “The Hunter” is an uniquely mesmerizing film about a man on a complex journey. While the film threatens to fall into cliché (and sometimes hangs on by its fingernails on the precipice of doing so), excellent cinematography and another mesmerizing performance by Willem Dafoe keep it engaging enough to the point that it develops a fascinating rhythm of its own. There’s a lot to like here in this tale of a lonely man, his elusive prey, and the family he meets that gets caught in the middle.

What starts as a relatively simple tale of a Hemingway-esque search by one hired hunter named Martin for a thought-extinct Tasmanian Tiger becomes something almost existential in this unique Australian drama. The great Dafoe plays the title character, a solitary man hired by a biotech company to hunt the tiger for their own genetic research and advancement. He travels to a small Australian town and pretends to be a scientist, lodging with a beautiful woman named Lucy (Frances O’Connor) and her two lovable children. The father of this family went missing months ago and it has left the mother addicted to pills. Between journeys into the mountains, the hunter heals the wounded family but also puts them in danger. There is a lot going on in these woods.

The Hunter
The Hunter
Photo credit: Magnolia Pictures

On paper, it might not seem like “The Hunter” has enough plot for a 104-minute movie. And early reviews had me thinking that it would consist of little more than a man, his hunting tools, and a lot of shots of the threatening Australian sky. There is some of that, but much more of the film takes place as a family drama than the title would have you believe. The hunter gets close to the smart, precocious daughter and then, once she’s cleaned up, to the mother. But there’s a sense of dread here, a feeling that something’s not right and things aren’t going to end well. It’s an accomplished piece tonally in that the atmosphere never feels quite safe.

And even more accomplished in terms of performance. O’Connor and Sam Neill are good in small performances but it’s Dafoe’s film all the way and he delivers one of the best performances of the year to date. I love how rarely Dafoe falls back on typical tricks or actor crutches. In his best work, he is so often just a believable person in the moment and not a performer trying to convey something to an audience through acting tricks. He is so rarely an actor willing to fall prey to melodrama. He’s one of our most underrated performers and “The Hunter” contains one of his most subtle and best pieces of work in years.

The Hunter
The Hunter
Photo credit: Magnolia Pictures

There are times when “The Hunter” drags and yet the final act feels oddly rushed – although I suppose one could argue that this is meant to mimic the arc of a real hunter who sits around doing nothing for large chunks of time and then has to take immediate, quick action. Still, I had some pacing issues as I thought the mid-section could have had a little more urgency and the final act a little less.

These are minor complaints given how much there is to digest here thematically. What first seems a simple tale of “man vs. nature” becomes something much more complicated. This is not a Jack London piece about a man trying to out-wit his prey. The tiger doesn’t know he’s there. The conditions aren’t that extreme. The film moves from its “man vs. nature” set-up to something much more philosophically challenging. What’s important to the hunter? Catching the last of a species? Only to give it over to a ruthless corporation? And is that potentially world-changing journey more important than the one he could take with just one family? The answers to these questions and the stark, uncompromising, depression vision of “The Hunter” won’t be easy to forget.

“The Hunter” stars Willem Dafoe, Frances O’Connor, Sam Neill, and Morgana Davies. It was written and directed by Daniel Nettheim. It opens at the Landmark Century Cinema in Chicago on April 27, 2012.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

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