Shot on location — which, in a post-Ocean’s 11 world, seems to be the calling card of legitimacy for otherwise unmemorable comedies — in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the cast and crew of The Hunting Party had to contend with the threat of hundreds of thousands of still-active landmines buried in the civil war-ravaged land. Likewise, writer and director Richard Shepard doesn’t spare his viewers; he sets bothersome cinematic traps – clunky expositions, a painfully overdone score and a gratuitous shot of Richard Gere’s bare ass (again) – that threaten to ruin a perfectly fun outing.
At its heart, The Hunting Party is a buddy comedy, starring Richard Gere and Terrence Howard, the thinking man’s Cuba Gooding, Jr., as two past-their-prime journalists who team up one last time to find a Serbian war criminal known as the Fox. Simon Hunt (Gere) was once a hot-shot war reporter, but after his breakdown on national television, it’s his cameraman, Duck (Howard), who rises to the top of the network heap. When Duck lands in Bosnia on assignment, a scruffy, debt-ridden Simon convinces him to find and interview the elusive Fox, whom the international community has supposedly been “hunting” for years. Oh, and did he mention the $5 million reward?
Hijinks ensue, as does mild commentary on ethnic tension, postwar culture and government ineptitude.
However, Simon and Duck remain the two least interesting characters on the screen. The show is consistently stolen by minor players like Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg), the bratty news intern; Boris (Mark Ivanir), a paranoid UN peacekeeping officer; and even the normally wooden Diane Kruger, who captivates simply by looking ugly (maybe it’s the Eastern European tracksuit). With Gere on smug-old-crackpot autopilot and Howard relegated to giving disapproving looks, the more serious side of the story – where our heroes are supposed to, you know, develop – goes nowhere.
Perhaps the most interesting – and entertaining – scene in the film is the closing credits montage, which details the real story behind the movie, based on Scott Anderson’s Esquire article from 2000. There’s no playing up for comedic effect; sadly, Shepard tells us, the CIA, the UN and the US government were just as bumbling in their search for war criminals as the film portrays.
The Hunting Party may be throwaway fall fare, but in an age when half the free world can’t manage to bust up a couple of caves in Afghanistan, the movie’s message isn’t all shivs and giggles.
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