Based on Julia Leigh’s novel, Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter boasts an intriguing premise, ripe for potential as an art-house thriller, slow-burning character study or an eco-friendly morality play. What it doesn’t possess is material enough to cover all three bases, but dammit if Nettheim doesn’t try anyway.
Willem Dafoe plays Martin, a skilled and ruthless mercenary sent into the Tasmanian wilderness on a hunt for the Tasmanian Tiger – a species believed to be extinct. For unclear reasons, he’s sent to live with a catatonically depressed widow Lucy (Frances O’Connor) and her two precocious children.
From the opening shots, Nettheim ladles on the visual and emotional metaphors thick and fast – often to a condescending degree. The slick, icy paletted corporate surroundings of Martin’s employers are in stark contrast to the incredible natural beauty of hippie Lucy’s wood cabin. Meanwhile, Martin’s privileged city slicker ways get him on the wrong side of the one-dimensional, hardscrabble locals, whose violent tendencies complicate Martin’s already near-impossible mission further.
Dafoe is always fascinating to watch, and seeing him silently and methodically lay traps, hunt and scout the widely varied and remarkably beautiful Australian landscapes is a luxuriously paced delight. His discomfort with Lucy’s children is also believable and often darkly funny – such as his discomfort and fear when they insist on joining him in the bath. But his transformation from a heartless mercenary into a protective father figure is simply too quick to be believable and isn’t helped by the sledgehammer script, in which painful comparisons are drawn between Martin and his elusive prey – “alone, hunting and killing, just waiting to die.”
As mysteries, conspiracies and moral quandaries about Martin’s employers begin to unfold, The Hunter boasts some nicely paced sequences of real tension and suspense. But despite Dafoe’s talent and Nettheim’s eye for beautiful settings, the meandering theme and overwrought “subtlety” diminish the potential brilliance of this adaptation.