The Hunter (IV) (2011)15 | 102 min | Adventure, Drama, Thriller | 6 July 2012 (UK)
Ratings: 6.8/10 from 28,035 users Metascore: 63/100
Reviews: 80 user | 152 critic | 15 from Metacritic.com
Martin, a mercenary, is sent from Europe by a mysterious biotech company to the Tasmanian wilderness on a hunt for the last Tasmanian tiger.
Storyline
The independent and lonely hunter Martin David is hired by the powerful biotech company Red Leaf to hunt down the last Tasmanian tiger. Red Leaf is interested in the DNA of the animal and Martin travels to Tasmania alone. He poses as a researcher from a university and lodges in the house of Lucy Armstrong. Martin learns that Lucy's husband has been missing for a long time and he befriends her children, Sass and Bike. When Martin goes to the village, he has a hostile reception from the locals. Along the days, Martin spends his days in the Tasmanian wilderness chasing the Tiger and becomes closer and closer to the Armstrong family. But Red Leaf wants results no matter the costs. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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I watched this on DVD on my laptop last night. I would recommend this film as it is actually quite a thought-provoking film that operates seamlessly on several levels.
On the surface, it's simply about this "hard" guy (Martin David) and his
mission and its consequences - he has accepted a potentially difficult but highly-paid contract (if he succeeds) from a bio-tech firm called RedLeaf, to retrieve certain
body parts from what is the last reported
Tasmanian Tiger sighted in Tasmania (an island off the SSE of Australia). Basically hired to kill the last of a rare species, he goes there under a cover story that he is conducting research into the Tasmanian Devil.
On another level, Martin has to confront the
ethical opposite of what he is doing, when he lodges at a house deep in the bush which is owned and occupied by "Greenies" - a distraught mother with a PhD who cannot cope with the loss of her husband, who had never returned from a trip into the bush looking for the Tasmanian Tiger, intending to protect it from logging companies bent on destroying its habitat. The woman's 2 children - a girl and a boy - are smart kids, and the boy is autistic and a savant. All 3 are seeking love from the missing father, and adopt Martin as a surrogate, (due to his cover story).
On yet another level, Martin has to contend with the almost tangible hostility of the men of the local community, whose sole employment is logging, and who believe him to be a "Greenie" (his cover story).
On a deeper level, the story is very much about
ethics - especially our personal ethical conflicts - and our search for love and for salvation/redemption from the continued failures of the Europeans in their colonisation - in this case, of Australia and Tasmania. The story is focused as a case in point on one of the many failures - the one that led to the moronic extinction of another species, the Tasmanian Tiger. The social justice and animal justice warriors who could probably have saved the Tasmanian Tiger and its habitat didn't exist until after the extermination had occurred. You could extend this sin of the European colonists to, for example, the inhuman treatment meted out to the Australian Aborigines - e.g., the film "Rabbit Proof Fence" (2002) - or the attempts to expunge the American aboriginals, the Indians, as captured so heroically in the old Cowboy versus Indian movies.
Perhaps at its deepest level, the film reflects that one may be able to seek and find love and redemption, becoming transformed through experiencing solitude, meditation, loss, hardship and deprivation.
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