The Hunter

I got pointed toward this film while searching for movies with Willem Dafoe after watching him shine in The Boondog Saints. Never having heard of 'The Hunter' before and seeing as it was released quite recently (2011) I made myself ready with a drink, some crackers and placed myself in a comfy chair ready to enjoy some Dafoe magic. Before starting it up, the only thing I knew was that a hunter, obviously, was going to Tasmania to find, kill and collect the last Thylacine, more commonly known and referred to as the Tasmanian tiger. I heard the names Tasmanian tiger and Tasmanian devil before and going into this movie I foolishly thought they were one and the same thing. The opening scenes made it clear that, in the movie, the infamous tiger is all but extinct and the last tiger DNA material is needed for the survival of the species trough, what is to be suspected, cloning technology.

Martin (Willem Dafoe) arrives in what appears to be a village full of woodcutters who are close to or about to lose their jobs because of environmental issues. From the get-go the locals don't hide the fact they don't like Martin at all. After all he is suspected to be a scientist with a "green" agenda, the very thing threatening their job. This whole situation gives of a real Steaven Seagal movie feel that luckily wears of before the plot thickens. Martin finds out he is not the first to have been sent over to Tasmania with the same objective. Luckily his apparent experience as a hunter gets him out of this complicated mess.

During the first two thirds of the movie, there is an almost constant build-up with nice music and beautiful scenes of far stretching forests and wildlife from the region. It's a pity that whole crescendo gets a bit lost in the close off part when the story seems to come in just a tad short in comparison to the start and the nucleus. Before the end I anticipated for an epic finale worthy of what I saw up to then, something I personally did not get. Don't get me wrong, the summation isn't bad at all, it's good even, but for me it's just not fitting the accretion seen up until then. Overall this movie has a good feel when it could have been great.