The Hunting Party Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

The Hunting Party Blu-ray Movie Review

Another wasted summer vacation.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 19, 2010

Where’s Robert Altman when you really need him? Of course the famous director shuffled off this mortal coil in November 2006, so that may have made him unavailable to helm The Hunting Party, a 2007 film that desperately needed an Altman-esque iconoclastic point of view. Based on an Esquire magazine article by journalist Scott Anderson entitled “What I Did on My Summer Vacation," The Hunting Party recounts the misadventures of a ragtag bunch of newsmen who set out to capture a nearby war criminal. Anderson, along with a small coterie of other journalists, including Sebastian Junger, had decided in a beer-induced fit of hubris, that they were well positioned, both geographically and otherwise, to hunt down and capture famed war criminal Radovan Karadžic. Karadžic had been spotted in the Serbian town of Celebici, within Bosnia-Herzogovina, where these journalists were vacationing on the way to the Adriatic Sea, and the short drive to the town seemed like an enterprising detour that might net them fame and, due to a five million dollar reward on Karadžic’s head, fortune. This basic premise is taken and fictionalized in The Hunting Party, but what could have been an Altman-esque romp through military and governmental intrigue (the journalists are mistaken as a CIA hit squad by UN peacekeepers) becomes instead an oddly schizoid journey that veers unevenly from melodrama to not really very funny comedy, with nary a focusing point of view in sight. The Hunting Party disappeared rather rapidly after its brief U.S. theatrical run, and it’s remained an oddity in the filmographies of both Richard Gere and Terence Howard. Now with its release on Blu-ray, the film may be exposed to a much wider audience than it ever was in its theatrical exhibition (where it didn’t even manage to scrape up a paltry one million in box office receipts), but it’s unlikely this is ever going to be thought of as a lost masterpiece rescued by the heroes of the home video market.

Gere portrays washed up network news reporter Simon Hunt, a sort of international Geraldo Rivera type, classic muckraker and investigative journalist, who had an unfortunate breakdown on live television where he lost it with the network’s Cronkite-esque anchor, Franklin Harris (James Brolin in a fun cameo). Of course it’s later revealed, in one of this film’s melodramatic attempts to invest the goings-on with some emotional poignancy, that Simon had just found his pregnant girlfriend murdered by The Hunting Party’s stand-in for Karadžic, a homicidal maniac named Bogdanovich (is that a joke?—if it is, it’s the funniest one in the film). Bogdanovich is nicknamed The Fox (Ljubomir Kerekeš), and we’re bludgeoned over the head with some supposed irony by being introduced to The Fox while he is—yep, you guessed it—fox hunting. Howard tags along for the ride as Hunt’s former cameraman, nicknamed Duck (as in “get down, you’re about to be shot”), now a sort of personal news producer for Harris.

The weird thing about The Hunting Party is that it really could have been an aces political thriller with a piquant comedic edge, something akin in a way to Altman’s great satires like M*A*S*H or even Health. Instead, director-screenwriter Richard Shepard doesn’t seem to quite know what he wants to do with this source material. Is it an edgy mistaken identity quasi-spy caper? Is it a demented road picture with three mismatched participants on a patently quixotic quest? Is it a scabrous exposé of the sanguine international reaction to war atrocities? The problem with The Hunting Party is that it’s all of these—and more—but never enough of any of them to achieve any integration and audience involvement.

The Hunting Party works best when it stays firmly in Altman inspired territory, as in the almost funny interchange at a Serbian peace keeping office, where the chief is a semi-addled guy who calls his secretary on the intercom despite the fact that she’s sitting right next to him, and who proffers a box of Dunkin’ Donuts to the three journalists as he warns them not to trek into the backwoods of Srpska (and, no, that name is not missing a vowel or several). Unfortunately, it’s one of the few well written and played scenes in the movie, which otherwise lurches from improbability to improbability with none of the wit and subtly anarchic humor that someone like Altman could have brought to the enterprise.

The waste that Shepard made of this source material becomes even more inexplicable when one watches the fascinating extra included on this Blu-ray, where Shepard, who seems a nice enough chap, interviews two of the actual journalists involved in the original escapade. These two guys are a laugh-a-minute duo, still not quite believing how incredibly stupid—and lucky—they were throughout their alcohol inspired adventure. Why didn’t Shepard make that movie? Instead, like so many other screenwriters and directors who think they know better, he had to supposedly improve the source material, making it “relevant” and “meaningful.” Those are two words that Altman, were he not already deceased, wouldn’t be caught dead uttering.

The Hunting Party Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Hunting Party's AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1 is a generally excellent affair which nonetheless has both very strong and a few less than stellar elements. Shepard chooses to desaturate and otherwise post-process some of the shots here, giving some sequences a slightly washed out, almost monochromatic look at times which turns greens into blacks and flesh tones into pale beiges, as well as upping the grain in some shots to fuzzy levels. These techniques actually helps develop the film's gritty subject matter, but it may leave some videophiles wondering where the hi-def action is. Overall, however, the picture here looks nicely sharp, with every weathered crevasse in Gere's face readily visible. Depth of field is often exceptional in the outdoor scenes, and the better lit interior scenes have good to very good fine detail. Contrast is variable due to some of the processing, but is generally good to excellent. There are some minor artifacting issues, with prevalent shimmer on foliage and some of the menswear.

The Hunting Party Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As might be expected, The Hunting Party exploits its lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 potential the most in the smattering of battle scenes, includng the rambunctious opening sequence where Duck is recounting his history with Simon. Explosions and gunfire pummel the viewer from a variety of channels, giving a nicely immersive feel to what it must be like to be stuck in the middle of some random gunfire. But The Hunting Party actually does provide nice utilization of surround channels throughout the film, including "littler" moments like The Fox in the forest hunting, where the scampering feet of the "actual" fox pitter patter across the channels and various ambient noises chirp and snap in the background. Dialogue is positioned pretty much right down the middle in this film, and is generally clear, though some of the supporting cast sport rather thick accents. Fidelity is excellent throughout the film, and the sound effects, several of which present some nice, if transitory, LFE, are very well mixed into the proceedings.

The Hunting Party Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

In the case of at least one of the extras included on this Blu-ray, you might be more entertained than by the film itself:

• Feature Commentary by Richard Shepard is good, with few dead spots, and provides some interesting background on how the Esquire story was "improved" for the screen.
• Deleted Scenes with Optional Director Commentary (SD; 5:24) offers six very short (sometimes just a few seconds) scenes that includes the background on Duck's nickname.
• The Real Hunting Party (SD; 29:42) is by far the best thing about this disc, an invigorating and refreshing half hour with two of the original journalists. If only the film had been made about them and their story.
• Makinig The Hunting Party (SD; 9:19) another standard EPK-fest, albeit with lots of "backstage" footage of scenes being shot.
• "What I Did On My Summer Vacation", a text based extra presenting the original Esquire article.
• Theatrical Trailer

The Hunting Party Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true. That epigram starts The Hunting Party out on a hopeful note, but unfortunately director Shepard too often veers from the politically inane and bureaucratic idiocies that really could have made this film a seering indictment not just of war criminals whose freedom is tacitly encouraged, but of the whole ridiculous amalgam of entities which congeals in a war torn region. Instead we get a lot of melodramatic hoo-hah that is just ridiculous, and not in a good way. Fans of Gere or Howard may want to rent this to check out a lesser known item in either of the actor's oeuvres, otherwise stick with any Robert Altman film.