In its opening minutes, “The Hunter” feels familiar. This is going to be one of those spare, stylish films about a loner mercenary-for-hire. Not quite. “The Hunter” is spare: Its characters don’t always say a lot, and some plot elements are left to the viewer to figure out. But partly set in the Tasmanian wilderness, there’s a beauty here when the atmosphere seems to take over the drama from the people.
The title character, played with finesse by Willem Dafoe, is certainly a man for hire, and he definitely prefers his solitude. As his mission is helpfully explained in an overly expository opening scene, the middleman tells him the client would like him to take on a partner. This is difficult terrain, the guy explains. The hunter, Martin David, will have none of it. “Two men is a security risk,” he declares. But we know that’s not the real reason he refuses help.
| On screen |
| ‘The Hunter’ |
| 3 out of 4 stars |
| Stars: Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill, Frances O’Connor, Morgana Davies |
| Director: Daniel Nettheim |
| Rated: R for language and brief violence |
| Running time: 101 minutes |
Martin’s been hired by a military-biotech firm to get biological samples from a Tasmanian tiger. The marsupial actually went extinct in the last century. But in the film, there have been reliable sightings of the creature called the rarest on the planet.
This is one of those jobs that changes the mercenary’s life — and disrupts his solitary nature forever. Martin is forced to stay in an old farmhouse with a family whose father has gone missing. The mother (Frances O’Connor) is practically comatose from the cocktail of pills that numbs the pain of losing her husband. The two children have been given a good grasp on profanity from the father they assume will soon be back.
You can guess what happens. This might not be the typical hitman movie — there’s a dose of environmental politics thrown in — but its tropes are stock. What sets it apart, of course, is Dafoe. He’s one of the most fascinating men on screen, and he doesn’t get nearly the kind of work he deserves. Watching him clean a tub, then bathe in it to the strains of the opera music he adores — quotidian things become extraordinary when Willem Dafoe does them.
