Year Released: 2007 Directed By: Richard Shepard Starring: Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg, James Brolin, Ljubomir Kerekes, Diane Kruger, Joy Bryant, Kristina Krepela, Dylan Baker (R, 104 min.)
Shepard has a killer eye for the things that rob us of our humanity and the lengths to which we will go get it back. He turned former 007, Pierce Brosnan, into a louche, paranoid, jittery trainwreck of an assassin in 2005's comic gem The Matador and he attempts to pull off a similar feat with Gere in The Hunting Party, but this time the strain of making the iconic Gere a more humanized, non-Hollywood presence shows through the black comedy and the resulting film is a mixed blessing: half self-rigtheous anti-authoritarian screed, half pitch-black comedy, but with no cohesive tone to speak of. It's a film filled with terrific sequences that never completely link up, as if Oliver Stone had reshot Salvador and called it Sarajevo and then forgotten to include James Woods. Gere plays an emotionally battered war correspondent whose career is in tatters after he loses it live on the six o'clock news while reporting from a Bosnian killing field. That was then, and now his former buddy and cameraman (Howard) has returned to the Balkans on a cushy assignment. The pair meet up, make up, and go off, disguised as – what else? – journalists, to catch the Fox, the local war criminal hiding in plain sight. Along the way, they're not only mistaken for a CIA hit squad but also run afoul of booze, bad memories, and all manner of wholly improbable semi-adventures. Based on an equally unlikely (but true) piece of Esquire reportage, The Hunting Party comes close to being a genuinely affecting, honestly uproarious film in the Welcome to Sarajevo vein, but Shepard's panicky, adrenalized script instead ricochets from moments of horrific violence to Gere, Howard, and Jesse Eisenberg (as the tag-along son of the network VP) yukking it up behind a scrim of steely battlefield regret. The most exciting part of the film is the end credits, which come complete with a real-world epilogue and reveal the actual journalists the film is based on. Nothing Gere or Howard do throughout the wild and woolly tale come close to that still-frame of their paunchy, beer-swilling templates grinning ear-to-ear, which makes me wish this had been a straight documentary rather than the convoluted and emotionally diluted semistraight feature film that it is.
Antichrist Lars von Trier lives to affront again. Chaos, indeed, reigns. - Marc Savlov The Blind Side John Lee Hancock, director of The Rookie, scores with another sports drama, this time concerning a true football story. - Kimberley Jones Fantastic Mr. Fox Opens Wednesday. - Marjorie Baumgarten The Messenger Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster play two members of the military's casualty notification team, which delivers bad news to soldiers' next of kin. - Marjorie Baumgarten Ninja Assassin Opens Wednesday. - Marjorie Baumgarten Old Dogs Opens Wednesday. - Marjorie Baumgarten Planet 51 In a switcheroo, animated aliens fear the human in their midst. - Marc Savlov Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire Much like the title character Precious, this rough-hewn movie overcomes the unlikely odds for its success. - Marjorie Baumgarten The Road Opens Wednesday. - Marjorie Baumgarten The Twilight Saga: New Moon Edward and Bella are back for more thwarted young vampiric love. - Marjorie Baumgarten Until the Light Takes Us This music documentary chronicles the history, ideology, and aesthetic of Norwegian black metal. - Raoul Hernandez
