Something to watch tonight: The Hunter

My impec­cable for­ward plan­ning sees this film in my F&S cal­en­dar to post today but without any clue as to why.

It’s not an “on this day” post and it does­n’t seem to be a new arrival on any stream­ing services.

Not to worry, it’s worth a look regard­less. I reviewed it for the Capital Times in March 2012¹ – the always reli­able Willem Dafoe along­side the always reli­able Sam Neill in a uniquely Australian story:

In The Hunter, Willem Dafoe plays a mys­ter­i­ous dude com­mis­sioned by a mul­tina­tion­al drug com­pany to find the last Tasmanian Tiger. His secret mis­sion takes him into the wil­der­ness, above the battle between con­ser­va­tion­ists and log­gers over nat­ive forest, but he’s not the only one after the sup­posedly extinct – and frankly bizarre – anim­al. Extremely well made, tense as all get out, only let down by an end­ing that tries to tie up every single loose end when it doesn’t have to, The Hunter is easy to miss but worth seek­ing out.

Also in that Capital Times review: the first Hunger Games film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the 21 Jump Street reboot (“The oth­er not­able aspect of the pic­ture is that I’m start­ing to see the poten­tial in Channing Tatum. As his part­ner, Jonah Hill’s range is not so exten­ded.”), Gareth Evans’ The Raid (recom­men­ded here back in February last year) and the doc­u­ment­ary, In Search of Haydn.

---

Where to watch The Hunter

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision
Australia: Digital rent­al
Canada: Digital rent­al from Google or YouTube
Ireland: Digital rent­al
India: Not cur­rently avail­able
USA: Streaming on Hulu or Kanopy
UK: Streaming on Curzon

---

Further listening

English thrill­er writer Len Deighton passed away this week at the age of 97. Back in September 2024, I spoke with RNZ Nights’ Emile Donovan about British spies on screen and Michael Caine’s three-film run as Deighton’s sar­don­ic work­ing class secret agent Harry Palmer was one of my highlights.

The Imprint Blu-ray box­set that I was talk­ing about there is still avail­able from Madman in Australia (and in New Zealand from a TradeMe seller who appears to be selling new cop­ies of almost every DVD and Blu-ray that was ever avail­able here).

1. Ah, maybe that was the reas­on. It did­n’t get pos­ted until May that year. I clearly allowed myself to get a long way behind. ↩︎