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The Hunting Party

Review By: Zak Santucci
ZakSantucci@TheCinemaSource.com

The Hunting Party is a low-key movie based on a true story that unfortunately is not very well known. Not only is the story surprisingly unknown, but I would be surprised at how many people today are really that well-versed on the Bosnian War. At the time I remember a lot of confusion even being expressed in the media as not that many people knew what distinguished a Serb from a Croat. After the new boundaries were drawn, it was hard to remember what constituted Yugoslavia or Bosnia or Croatia. Rest assured, this movie is not nearly as confusing.

This movie uses the backdrop of a few years after the war. Richard Gere plays a grizzled journalist who is black-listed from the industry after an uncensored breakdown on live television. Terrence Howard plays his old cameraman who is back from his cushy studio camera job to take the son of the network VP (Jesse Eisenberg) on his first assignment to cover post-war Bosnia. They run into Gere who has hatched a crazy plot to find the most dangerous war criminal (“The Fox”) in Bosnia, and interview him.

I came into the theatre with absolutely no idea of what to expect, I didn’t even know what movie I would be seeing until right before, as last minute changes and fill-ins tend to happen. All I knew coming in was that the movie was written and directed by Richard Shepard who had made the surprise critical hit, The Matador. There were no pre-conceived images from the trailer, no posters, no buzz. It was a surprisingly refreshing ride, as that rarely happens these days.

The movie definitely didn’t have the charm of The Matador. In fact it wasn’t really a “dark comedy” as much as it was an absurd drama. The main theme of this movie being that the governments that claim to hunt down these war criminals, simply don’t try. There are secret amnesty deals and the like keeping groups like the CIA from finding the main performers of a lot of these war atrocities. There proof being that five journalists did in fact find one of the worst criminals of the Bosnian War after only a couple weeks of trying, after the CIA claimed to be looking for years. One scene captures the political message and humor of the movie quite succinctly when Howard is informed of a lot of the complications of finding “The Fox”, he tells the U.N. representative “You’re not making any sense, now.” He replies quite matter-of-factly, “I know. I’m the United Nations.”

The movie was entertaining. Gere was superb in one of the best performances he’s ever been in (although this is the first time I’ve been thoroughly impressed by his acting). The movie itself didn’t really offer me that much outside of Gere, however. ...