The Hunter

★★★★

(2010)

Rafi Pitts film three feature films have headed out into the world relatively unnoticed, garnering circles of intense critical praise for their mood and beauty but the Iranian director has set his sights on making far more of a splash with The Hunter. Taking on a film as star and director and pulling out a gambit of genres along the way, culminating straight-lace-like in a quietly tense thriller.

Pitts plays Ali, a security guard quietly desperate in every way. An ex criminal not worthy enough to get out of the night shift in his work as a security job. He’s a passionately lonely character, not able to see his wife and child as much as he’d like, trapped in a world of solitude and using his joy for hunting in the woods as a way to keep himself detached from his quiet existence. When his wife and child are strangely killed off screen in a police shootout Ali, hopeless in his hunt for the killers (cops or robbers), chooses an odd and random revenge which will see him on the run from the police in the woods he knows so well.

Pitts’ methodical direction is slowly paced but beautiful to look at. His solemn thuggish face peers through almost every frame and although not a performance as quietly charismatic as say, Romain Duris in The Beat My Heart Skipped, it’s near silent power is nonetheless enduring. The film does shift about in it’s seat a little, becoming many things; A political message, a forlorn character study and a near redemption thriller.

The Hunter doesn’t give many solid answers to the questions it raises but it’s a powerful and eerily quiet walk through the woods.