The Hunting Party
Director: Richard Shepard. Screenplay: Richard Shepard. Cinematography: David Tattersall. Film editing: Carole Kravetz-Aykanian. Production design: Jan Roelfs. Music: Rolfe Kent. Producers: Mark Johnson, Scott Kroopf, Bill Block. With: Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Kruger, James Brolin, Joy Bryant, Dylan Baker, Mark Ivanir, Ljubomir Kerekes, Goran Kostic, Kristina Krepela. USA/Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina. Languages: English, Serbo-Croatian. 100 min. 2007.
Richard Gere and Terrence Howard play Simon and Duck, a reporter and a cameraman who have traveled down very different career paths: Duck has prospered his way into the boredom of safe but predictable assignments, while Simon has been drummed out of journalism for melting down on live TV when he could no longer stomach the mainstream media’s demand for relentlessly bland reporting about relentlessly horrific world events.
Their paths cross again when Simon instigates a search for an elusive Bosnian war criminal, ostensibly to interview him but secretly hoping to capture him and collect a multimillion-dollar reward. Will they succeed where all the resources of the international community have failed? And come to think of it, why has the international community failed so miserably on this case? They caught Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić in no time flat, didn’t they? No, actually, they didn’t. And therein lies the driving irony of the movie, which is loosely based on an Esquire magazine article about five reporters who decided to get on Karadžić’s trail in 2001.
The picture’s sardonic tone and Gere’s darkly humorous acting are strongly reminiscent of “The Hoax,” the intelligent 2006 satire that starred Gere as Clifford Irving, the intrepid con artist and master of scams. He and Howard are excellent; so are Jesse Eisenberg, as a rookie reporter who tags along on the trip, and Dylan Baker, as an American agent whose appearance near the end of the story propels it toward a finale that would seem starkly cynical (and, alas, cruelly realistic) if the freewheeling main characters didn’t have more moral backbone than all the official government crusaders put together. A few weak moments aside, this is a smart and salient romp, blending on-target commentary with buddy-movie fun. – David Sterritt
