A flabby, uninspired action film that hopes its political
agenda will distract audiences from its general crappiness, The
Hunting Party takes oblique aim at the current administration’s
poor track record in hunting down war criminals. Set in the aftermath
of the Bosnian War, the “based on true events” plot hinges on the
inability—or unwillingness—of government agencies to track
down a Serbian war criminal called “The Fox.” So where the UN fails,
truth and justice are left with only one defender: Richard Gere.
Gere plays Simon, a war correspondent who has an on-air meltdown
while covering the war in Bosnia. Simon then disappears for
years—only to emerge again in (surprise!) Bosnia, broke and
broken, where he reunites with his old cameraman, Duck (Terrence
Howard).
Simon has personal reasons for wanting The Fox (Ljubomir Kerekes)
dead. (It has something to do with a beautiful dead girl and
overwrought flashback sequences.) So Simon concocts a story about
wanting to interview The Fox, and manages to coerce Duck and brainy
nerd-kick Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg) into helping him—but it soon
becomes clear that Simon has dragged the others on a homicide
mission.
The Hunting Party strives to position itself as a thinking
man’s action movie: Witness its unconventional structure and meta-nods
to other action movies (Chuck Norris references abound). Unfortunately,
it’s not quite smart enough for most of the thinking men I know, and
I’d advise thinking women to give this one a wide berth as well. (The
women in this movie are: hot but dumb, or dead, or black widow spiders.
So much for that political agenda.)
But whether based on true events or not, there’s no forgiving
writer/director Richard Shepard’s hodgepodge of uninspired dialogue
(“Putting your life in danger is actual living. The rest is just
television.”) and painful clichés. As far as I can tell from the
testosterone-dependent The Hunting Party, being in a war zone is
like having a partial erection all the time. But for all the
semi-erect men running around in this film, the result is frustratingly
flaccid.