Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

The Hunter's Prayer Blu-ray Movie Review

Forgive them their sins.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 8, 2017

Jonathan Mostow, the director of The Hunter’s Prayer, mentions in one of the featurettes included on this Blu-ray disc as a supplement that he was drawn to this story because its tale of a kind of quasi father-daughter on the run was something new and he had never really seen anything like it before. It would be perhaps easy pickin’s to trot out a laundry list of other films that have at least some semblance of this same premise, but I’ll cut to the chase (no pun intended, given this film’s general plot conceit) and mention last year’s Blood Father, a film which posited an actual father and daughter struggling to reestablish a long estranged relationship while both of them seek to evade being killed by a coterie of villainous types. Blood Father is an even more relevant example since its father is a former addict struggling with addiction, and his daughter is still in the throes of her own substance abuse issues. The Hunter’s Prayer offers Sam Worthington as a drug addicted hitman named Lucas who decides not to kill his latest “assignment”, a teenaged girl named Ella Hatto (Odeya Rush), for reasons not so subtly linked to Lucas’ own fraught relationship with his biological daughter, who’s around the same age. As I mentioned in the Blood Father Blu-ray review, that film played like a kind of flip side to Taken, and this film certainly follows in those same by now familiar footsteps, with a man with a “special set of skills” attempting to gain freedom (in one form or another) for a young girl.

One of the putative innovations in The Hunter’s Prayer’s screenplay is the fact that it doesn’t initially divulge the fact that Lucas is out to kill Ella. The film in fact starts with another hit, a disturbing scene of an assassin taking out an entire family (plus housekeeper and dog, just for good measure) in a rather luxe looking ultramodern home somewhere in the woods. That turns out to be Ella’s father and stepmother, but when the film segues to Switzerland, where Ella is enrolled in a boarding school, and when Lucas starts shadowing her, she thinks it’s because her father has hired someone to keep an eye on her. That actually seems to be the case when Lucas notices another goon type hanging around and decides to preemptively shoot the guy, which of course causes a major panic. The upshot is that Lucas and Ella (and, briefly, Ella’s would be boyfriend) end up on the lam together.

There is already some logical wobbliness going on, since this early in the film Lucas’ motivations aren’t very clear, and even after it’s been revealed he’s a conflicted assassin, there’s kind of the looming question as to why he just didn’t let the other hitman complete the job to kill Ella? There’s also the completely unexplained phenomenon of an absolute horde of hitmen assistants who initially take off after Ella and Lucas in one of the film’s patented seeming (but admittedly effective) car chase sequences. This whole artifice begs the question as to why super villain Richard Addison (Allen Leech) even needs Lucas’ services to begin with, since he evidently has every available sharpshooter with a gun already on his payroll. Of course in films like this, it can be better not to think too hard about contrivances and just go with the flow, and the good news is, despite the undeniable ludicrousness of much of The Hunter’s Prayer, the film is generally well paced if rarely emotionally forceful or logically coherent.

Somewhat similarly to Taken and even the Jason Bourne franchise, The Hunter’s Prayer benefits from a whirlwind assortment of various locations (though one of the making of featurettes included on this Blu-ray provides some surprising answers as to where various sequences were actually shot—i.e., not always in the place it purports to be). That at least gives the film a little scenery to enjoy as a fairly predictable set of circumstances ultimately leads to a showdown between Lucas and Addison, with an equally predictable outcome. The film is so rote in both general plot dynamics and characterizations (Lucas is supposedly an Iraqi war vet with PTSD stemming from an unfortunate incident with a dog—and, no, I’m not kidding) that most armchair scenarists are going to be able to tick off coming events long before they show up on screen, but the film does deliver with some of its anxiety inducing set pieces.

Worthington has one moment of displayed emotion in this film (during his reminiscence about the Fallujah dog incident), but otherwise grimaces his way through the film as a drug addled hitman with a conscience. Rush is at least somewhat more demonstrative as Ella and manages to convey some of the character’s vulnerability as well as a certain amount of snottiness, at least in the early going. The film, as so many thrillers of this ilk tend to do, really belongs to Leech as Addison, a guy who has decided to send a message to all of his employees after Ella’s father embezzles several tens of millions from him.

The Hunter's Prayer Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Hunter's Prayer is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. This is not just another film where the IMDb doesn't offer technical data, but one where there's not even a clickable link for technical specs on the site. However, the making of featurettes included on the Blu-ray offer a second unit director wearing an Alexa cap and another stunt director specifically mentioning Alexa cameras (along with Blackmagic for one stunt sequence). This has the typically sharp and glossy look of Alexa digital capture, and the presentation benefits from some very nice looking location work (even if the supposed locations are in fact being replicated by other locales). Despite a prevalence of scenes in cars and other dark interiors, shadow definition is generally quite good, and the surplus of extreme close-ups means that fine detail is also excellent a lot of the time as well. There is some typical grading going on, but really not as ubiquitously as is often the case with thrillers like this, and as a result the palette looks natural overall, with good saturation.

The Hunter's Prayer Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Hunter's Prayer has a typically robust DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, one that immerses the listener in a glut of surround activity in the big set pieces like the car chase or a much later crowd scene at Addison's formidable estate. Bursts of gunfire also provide good sonic energy, but all of this said, the largest bulk of the film is actually dialogue scenes between Lucas and Ella, where only elements like ambient environmental sounds offer much surround activity. The entire track is very smartly prioritized, even in the cacophonous action sequences, and fidelity is just fine throughout.

The Hunter's Prayer Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Cost of Killing: Making The Hunter's Prayer (1080p; 11:08) is standard EPK material, but has some decent interviews and behind the scenes footage.


• The World of the Hunter (1080p; 4:26) takes a look at some of the locations, including the gorgeous estate that serves as Addison's mansion.


• Creating the Driving Force (1080p; 3:37) documents the car chase towards the beginning of the film, and serves as a great example of how digital grading has affected some film techniques. In the film this looks like it takes place in the dead of night, but it was clearly shot during the day.

The Hunter's Prayer Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Hunter's Prayer might have benefited from some additional Divine Intervention, since it's a pretty resolutely predictable and by the numbers affair. It still has its fair share of well staged action sequences, and Leech is a lot of fun as a scenery chewing bad guy. Technical merits are strong for those considering a purchase.