David O'ConnellThe Hunter
October 4th 2011 05:33
What if a Tasmanian tiger still existed somewhere in the wilds of our smallest state? Would we do everything in our power to preserve it? Or would self-serving special interest groups with unlimited resources attempt to thwart official bodies to claim a prize of inestimable historical significance?
After an inauspicious feature debut, Angst (2000), and years of toiling on various television shows, director Daniel Nettheim returns to the big screen with an adaptation of The Hunter, a novel by Julia Leigh. A biotech company, hearing word of a sighting in Tasmania, decide to send their most effective mercenary Down Under to investigate and bring back conclusive proof in a sample of the mythical, long-thought extinct creature.
Their agent, Martin David (Willem Defoe) is a lone wolf, a man well acquainted with globe-hopping to complete his missions, but always flying solo. We sense a military precision in the way he operates, eliminating all potential emotional resonance from the task at hand.
Against a backdrop of dense bushland and predictably drab Tasmanian skies, David finds out he's to board with a family living in the vicinity of the supposed sighting. He’s initially greeted by the children, Sass (Morgana Davies), and mute younger brother Bike (Finn Woodlock). It’s only after a day or two that their grieving mother, Lucy (Frances O’Connor), emerges from her self-induced funk. She regularly turns to the ameliorating properties of medication, it seems, to help avoid confronting the reality of her zoologist husband’s disappearance.
Dafoe’s portrayal is understated, a good thing in that the mystery surrounding his presence is well sustained. We’re forced to spend a lot of time with David too; the unsettled domesticity that he’s intruding upon is punctuated by elongated scenes of him meticulously combing the rugged terrain. Here he persists in search of clues to the tiger’s existence, setting traps and wordlessly contemplating the wisdom of his endeavour.
Though it maintains a base level of interest throughout, there’s nothing especially riveting about The Hunter (2011). It fails badly at creating secondary characters of interest: O’Connor’s character feels like another variation on the psychologically scarred mother in Blessed (2009). Sam Neill fares worst however; his gruff old neighbour, guide and moral protector of Lucy and the kids, Jack Mindy, is almost embarrassingly clichéd and undernourished. There’s simply no meat on these bones and the best efforts of screenwriter Alice Addison can’t paper over the blatant inadequacies of Leigh’s scant story.
A topical ecological angle is raised via the aggressive locals who make an enemy of David, intruding upon and violating their land under the guise of a university approved researcher. But the focus shifts before wading too deeply into contentious waters, leaving us with a story that ultimately feels skeletal. The emotional spike and tentative catharsis of the final scenes feel like a screenwriter desperately reaching for a broadly satisfactory resolution. But even these welcome, if slightly implausible, increases in emotional range can’t save what is a solid but dour, generally underwhelming film.
The Hunter is released in Australian cinemas on Thursday, October 6.
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