Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Fate Is the Hunter Blu-ray Movie Review

CSI: NTSB.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 12, 2014

The disaster film craze was still a few years in the offing when Fate is the Hunter premiered in 1964, but Hollywood had already flirted with aircraft in distress in such famous outings as The High and the Mighty. Ostensibly based on a bestselling reminiscence by aviation professional (and writer) Ernest K. Gann (who successfully fought to have his name removed from the credits after he objected to the film’s approach), Fate is the Hunter opens with a spectacular crash of a jet, and then spends the rest of the film in a combination of flashbacks and investigative procedural as a team of experts attempts to figure out what made the plane go down shortly after takeoff. This structural gambit gives Fate is the Hunter a curiously lurching quality, one which may in fact have exacerbated the dismay that Gann evidently felt when he realized the film was going to concentrate on the drama surrounding a plane crash. While Harold Medford’s adaptive screenplay is probably needlessly melodramatic and stuffed to the gills with various sidebars and tangents, and some of the investigative techniques depicted in the film seem positively ridiculous at times, Fate is the Hunter is still kind of interesting, intellectually if never emotionally, as an accounting of how professionals like those in the NTSB go about determining what kinds of human error or technological foibles contribute to downing an aircraft. With the recent media frenzy surrounding the disappearance of the ill fated Malaysian Airlines flight 370, Fate is the Hunter might provide some passing interest for those who wonder how the blathering pundits on various cable news channels arrive at some of their opinions vis a vis pilot malfeasance or some less nefarious chain of events leading to disaster. While Fate is the Hunter may ultimately not be an overly compelling experience, this new Blu-ray has a “secret weapon” of sorts with its inclusion of the often touching and moving documentary about co-star Nancy Kwan, To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shen’s Journey, produced and directed by Twilight Time’s Brian Jamieson. Even those who don’t find Fate is the Hunter particularly appealing may well want to check out this disc for the documentary, which while a bit too self-consciously arty at times (a trait shared by Jamieson’s partner Nick Redman’s Becoming John Ford, included on Drums Along The Mohawk ) still delivers a really fascinating “up close and personal” look at Kwan, one of the first major stars of Eurasian descent.

It’s probably no mere coincidence that Ernest K. Gann also wrote the novel The High and the Mighty was based on, for in a certain way Fate is the Hunter attempts to deconstruct the basic premise of that iconic film, turning it on its head (or its fuselage, as the case may be), by actually having the plane crash literally straight out of the gate as the film opens. That leaves the rest of the film to wander through a sometimes off-putting collection of flashbacks and investigative angles that never really add up to totally compelling drama, either “then” or “now”.

The problem with the “then” is that most of the stories which purport to deal with doomed pilot Jack Savage (Rod Taylor), going back years to wartime don’t really seem to be shedding much light on what brought down his jet in the mid-sixties. Similarly, the “current day” procedural doesn’t exactly match up with today’s overly technical, often picayune focused fare like CSI, and in fact once the denouement is reached, it feels like something your Dad probably told you when you were four and splashing around in the bathtub near some plugs. Glenn Ford portrays investigator Sam McBane, a square and stolid sort who is not content to go along with the party line that Savage was drunk and the jet came down due to pilot error.

With The High and the Mighty, the cast of characters shared the common distress of being on an airliner that might be doomed. That kind of plot artifice necessarily unites a group and provides immediate, situation specific context. With Fate is the Hunter, we’re instead offered a glut of okay but hardly earth shattering anecdotal information that includes everything from a prior romance (Nancy Kwan) to, rather improbably, a wartime interlude with Jane Russell, but it really does nothing to advance the central question of what happened to the plane. Finally, when the sole survivor, stewardess Martha Webster (Suzanne Pleshette), is forced to relive the tragedy in a “recreation”, things tip over into pure melodrama that at least resembles a train wreck, if not an aviation disaster.

Fate Is the Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Fate is the Hunter's sole Academy Award nomination came for its crisp but often lustrous black and white cinematography by Milton R. Krasner, and that has been reproduced with excellent precision and clarity in this AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. Krasner uses the widescreen format, offering both panoramic views and more intimate midrange shots, and this presentation's very consistent contrast and satisfying black levels create a nicely sharp and defined viewing experience. The higher resolution of the Blu-ray more than reveals the use of miniatures in the film's opening crash sequence, but perhaps surprisingly also adds a patina of realism to the life sized "remnants" of the plane that are seen at various times throughout the film as the investigation continues. The opening nighttime sequence has more than ample shadow detail, and the entire offering boasts natural looking grain, and an absence of both compression artifacts and any obvious digital tweaking.

Fate Is the Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Fate is the Hunter offers a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track that ably recreates the film's somewhat limited sound design. Once the opening fracas is over with, the rest of the soundtrack is comprised mostly of small scale dialogue scenes, with occasional ambient sound effects and equally occasional Jerry Goldsmith underscore. The mono format supports this all perfectly well, with excellent fidelity and no damage to report.

Fate Is the Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shen's Journey (1080i; 1:46:31) is, as mentioned above, perhaps worth the price of admission alone, at least for those with a hankering to find out more about Nancy Kwan. While some of the documentary's misty eyed references to tragedy aren't especially mysterious, this has the benefit of at least having a point of view, as Kwan hints at a loss in her past while returning to Hong Kong for the first time in decades to attend the premiere of a Suzie Wong ballet. There's some great information here about the vagaries of the Hollywood star machine, and if Kwan is a little discursive at times (perhaps only hinting at some difficulties her career encountered), To Whom It May Concern is a nice exploration of a woman whose Hollywood stardom is just one part of an interesting history.


• Isolated Score with Commentary by Nancy Kwan and Nick Redman is an interesting amalgamation where Kwan discusses the film and her career until everyone shushes up while a Jerry Goldsmith cue plays. Goldsmith managed to fashion a pop tune out of his theme, though I've personally never been able to track down sheet music (if it was actually ever published). The score is delivered in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (480p; 2:20)

Fate Is the Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Gann's original novel was at least partly autobiographical, and was evidently stuffed to the gills with anecdotes about the history of flight—both civilian and military—from World War II on. Why the filmmakers decided to more or less simply buy a title and then invent a not very involving story of a doomed jet is anyone's guess, but Harold Medford's screenplay only further muddies the water by introducing all sorts of padded anecdotes to help us understand Savage and McBane. If the central mystery had been more compelling and the backstories more cogently woven into the story, Fate is the Hunter probably would have been more exciting. As it stands, it's a decently interesting but flawed attempt to wed a proto-disaster film ambience with a more intimate character study. Despite the film's flaws, the Blu-ray presentation is top flight (sorry), and the bonus documentary is a real gem. As a package, Recommended.