Film Review: The Hunter

The Hunter. Rated M (coarse language and infrequent violence). 100 mins. Directed by Daniel Nettheim. Screenplay by Alice Addison. Based on Wain Fimeri’s original adaptation of the novel by Julia Leigh.

Please note: This review contains spoilers below the line.

As iconic contemporary cinema scenes go, there are few that can rival the epic, purely cinematic torque of Platoon Sergeant Elias’s (Willem Dafoe) brutal slaying at the hands of enemy forces in Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War masterpiece Platoon (1986). As the American soldiers are successfully evacuated in helicopters (to the unexpected accompaniment of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings), Chris (Charlie Sheen) spots Elias – still on the ground – desperately attempting to out-run enemy bullets. Even though the US choppers return to try and rescue him, it is too late. It is unforgettable, gut-wrenching stuff – and Dafoe’s performance in this sequence (and, in fact, the entire film) is extraordinary.

In Alan Parker’s searing Mississippi Burning (1988), Dafoe is brilliant as FBI Agent Alan Ward opposite Gene Hackman’s Agent Rupert Anderson. When the two men are called upon to investigate the murder of civil rights workers in 1964, the young Agent Ward finds himself pitted as much against Anderson’s rogue methods of enquiry as he does against the sinister townsfolk and their links to the infamous Ku Klux Klan.

In Mr Nettheim’s brooding, moody and slippery The Hunter, Dafoe is perfectly cast as Martin David – a mercenary sent by the mysterious biotech company Red Leaf to trap a Tasmanian Tiger which has reportedly been sighted in a particularly remote part of the Tasmanian wilderness. Masquerading as a university eco-researcher, Martin finds himself billeted with a young family at the base of the mountainous terrain where the tiger has apparently been spotted. Young mum Lucy (Frances O'Connor) spends her days and nights tranquillised by prescription drugs while her children Sass (Morgana Davies) and Bike (Finn Woodlock) roam freely about the property like young cubs of a mountain pride. Their father and Lucy’s husband has been missing in the mountainous terrain for months – having, himself, been hunting the elusive tiger. Supported, watched and shadowed by local guide Jack Mindy (a sinister Sam Neill), Martin departs on his hunt for the tiger – unlocking a veritable Pandora’s Box of haunting psychological challenges along the way.

If the film never quite reaches the soaring, psychologically thrilling heights to which it aspires from a story-telling point of view, technically Nettheim’s big-picture aspirations are hypnotic – grounded by the fiercely protected claims to sovereignty maintained by the logging and ecological industries as they go head-to-head in Ms Addison’s refreshingly unsentimental screenplay. But while there’s much to be said for the dank, harsh and unforgiving Tasmanian wilderness – the undeniable co-star of this film is flawlessly interrogated by cinematographer Robert Humphreys (Somersault) – the script is indecisive with regards to precisely just how much of its protagonist’s darkside it wants to explore.

What powers the overriding sense of paranoia and helplessness is suspicion – and suspicion, as Alfred Hitchcock, for example, knew only too well, takes time. In The Hunter, Nettheim certainly takes his time, and is more than ably-rewarded by the intricacies of the almost therapeutic nature of Dafoe’s patient snare building and trap setting. If Ms O’Connor’s under-written Lucy exists chiefly to ferry cups of tea about the place, Woodlock turns in a superb performance that belies his age as the mute young son – and it is in all of his scenes with Dafoe (particularly a stunning generator-repair sequence and the sequence when he leads Martin from the property on his bicycle) that The Hunter dips its toe masterfully into deeply rewarding territory.

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When Dafoe finally does confront his prey (brilliantly realised to mythological proportions by Sydney-based visual effects company Fuel VFX) – The Hunter sheds what had previously appeared to be comparatively tenuous and less-interesting sub-plots (what motivates Mr Neill's excellent Jack Mindy remains something of a mystery) to become something transcendentally arresting. It’s an unlikely moment of cinematic genius – where each of the film’s previously disparate threads suddenly unite in perfectly metered, breathless hyper-realism.

While the film’s final schoolyard scene plays with something like a terribly convenient epilogue, it’s actually not until days after seeing the film that the grand sense of completion evolves to a greater understanding and appreciation of everything this film has set out to achieve. Its greatest success is the extent to which it haunts you, both emotionally and psychologically – ultimately revealing itself to be unforgettable cinematic poetry that quite clearly marks Mr Nettheim and his impossibly daring producer Vincent Sheehan (Animal Kingdom) as the ones to watch.

The Hunter screens nationally from 6 October.

Pictured: Willem Dafoe and Finn Woodlock in The Hunter. Image courtesy Madman Entertainment.

Festival Update: The Hunter lines up

The Hunter, from director Daniel Nettheim (Rush, The Secret Life of Us), will have its world premiere at the prestigious ‘Special Presentation’ section of the 36th Toronto International Film Festival in September – lining up in the celebrated company of past selectees including Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler.

“I am thrilled to be presenting The Hunter to Toronto audiences, a story and landscape that is distinctly Australian and a film that I am very proud of”, Nettheim said.

Announcing the news this morning, Paul Wiegard, Managing Director of the film’s distributors Madman Entertainment, said: “Madman is ecstatic the film is being introduced to industry and public audiences attending the Toronto International Film Festival. The stunningly beautiful Tasmanian landscape, international cast and exotic nature of the film will have broad appeal.”

Equally thrilled is the film’s Producer Vincent Sheehan (Animal Kingdom, Little Fish). “It has been a long journey and quite an adventure making The Hunter, and selection for Toronto is certainly very exciting, but I am equally looking forward to our Australian release later this year”, Sheehan said.

Based on the novel by Julia Leigh, The Hunter is described as ‘a powerful psychological drama’ that tells the story of Martin (Willem Dafoe), a mercenary sent from Europe by a mysterious biotech company to the Tasmanian wilderness on a dramatic hunt for the last Tasmanian Tiger.

Still courtesy Madman Entertainment.

Film Review: Snowtown

Snowtown. Rated MA15+ (strong themes and violence, sexual violence and coarse language). 120 minutes. Directed by Justin Kurzel. Screenplay by Shaun Grant.

As serial killing sprees always do, the infamous ‘bodies in the barrels’ murders in South Australia have both captivated and repelled our society’s fascination for the evil that men and women are capable of. In Snowtown, Kurzel and Grant hit their marks – absolutely – with an unrelentingly gruelling, shocking and unapologetic study of how the pursuit of deadly intentions can infiltrate a vulnerable community with utterly devastating results.

When the charismatic and resourceful John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) rides into town, his first task is to rid the neighbourhood of the sex-offender who lives across the road from a family of three young boys and their mother Elizabeth Harvey (Louise Harris). Having earned the admiration and respect of young Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway) and his two brothers, Bunting’s blood-lusty killer instinct finds a foothold, and before too much longer, perverts, friends and acquaintances are dispatched with alarming precision and a singularly precise motive – they deserve to die.

Magnificently photographed in an uncompromisingly colourless fashion by Animal Kingdom cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, Snowtown is an astonishing feature film debut from Kurzel, and Grant’s screenplay is bone-chilling in both its efficiency and the way in which it refuses to detour from the entirely horrific circumstances in which this fragile community exists.

Ms Harris is brilliant as the complex and tortured matriarch, and without her potent (and often wordless) comprehension of the unravelling horror and her powerlessness to do anything about it, Snowtown would disintegrate into a shocking indulgence. It is one of the best performances in an Australian film – ever. Henshall is magnetic as Bunting, even if his one-note role in the story ultimately becomes (as you might expect) too wearying. Pittaway (pictured) is equally superb as the damaged teenager – whose eyes reveal the dead heart and soul that provides the film with its confronting final shot. The brilliant supporting cast all commit to the story with rare skill and a complete lack of pretension – providing the film with a incredibly confronting level of honesty and authenticity.

Like its step-brother Animal Kingdom, Snowtown represents something of a new maturity in our film culture. It is an often unwatchable, exhausting, cruel and confronting piece of cinema – and should either be seen, or avoided, for precisely those reasons.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom. 113 minutes. MA15+. Written and Directed by David Michôd.

When David Michôd’s debut feature Animal Kingdom was catapulted into the international spotlight by winning one of the Sundance Film Festival’s prestigious Grand Jury Prizes, the anticipation accompanying its release in Australia became intense. Here was an Australian film from an unknown writer and director that had taken the film world entirely by surprise. Absent were the big name drawcards, the massive production and marketing budgets, and the almost pre-requisite tourism tie-ins.

Michôd’s near-perfect film is an astonishingly accomplished debut – nurtured by, one suspects, devoted and complete attention to every creative detail by Producer Liz Watts (Little Fish). Brave producers are rare beasts, and they can make or break a film’s chances of escaping anonymity. The intensive script development process to which Michôd’s script has been subjected, has paid rich dividends. It’s the most engrossing piece of writing for the camera in recent memory – and the creative team, including Art Director Janie Parker (Somersault, Little Fish) and Production Designer Josephine Ford (My Brother Jack) have responded to its lean, purely cinematic muscle with absolute relish and conviction.

The allegorical ‘animals’ of the title are the Cody family, led with chilling efficiency by matriarch Janine (Jacki Weaver, in a career-defining performance). When her daughter dies from a drug overdose leaving her teenage son Joshua (James Frecheville, pictured) orpahaned, Janine takes responsibility for the boy’s future. What he will learn – and quickly – about life as the youngest member of a criminal family, results in a story of extreme levels of constant and increasingly unbearable anxiety and fear.

Everything about Michôd’s direction and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw’s photography is measured, considered and necessary, while editor Luke Doolan ensures the deceptively languorous pace – reminiscent of a recurring nightmare – renders the story both relentlessly and utterly compelling. Antony Partos’s score and Sam Petty’s sound design combine perfectly to create a soundscape of such soul-tearing complicity with the material that, at times, it was just impossible to hold back the tears.

The entire cast are outstanding and never put a foot wrong – with Ben Mendelsohn, Luke Ford, Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton and Sullivan Stapleton all delivering career-best performances. But Frecheville – whose stunning turn as the cub of the pride – is a revelation. His scene, alone, in a suburban bathroom will break your heart.

Stripped of all the crime genre’s recently attendant glamour and neon, Animal Kingdom owes more to The Godfather than it does to Underbelly – but if you aspired to live the life that this family lives, regardless of what trimmings and advantages you might think came with the territory, you’d have to be seriously fooling yourself. This is an unmissable, landmark Australian film. See it.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition (Wednesday 16 June, 2010) of the Geraldton Guardian.