Hunting Party, The

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To be completely honest, "The Hunting Party" is a movie that I would never have seen if I hadn´t been asked to review it. And after sitting through its entire one hundred and four minutes of running time plus the additional forty-five minutes´ worth of extras and the director´s commentary that lulled me to sleep, I am surprised to find that I can barely remember this film a mere ten hours after finishing it. That´s not to say that I thought the "The Hunting Party" was bad; it was just effortlessly underwhelming and devoid of any memorable moments.

Loosely based on true events, "The Hunting Party" follows Simon (Richard Gere), a discredited journalist on the hunt for the number-one war criminal in Bosnia. Enlisted into Simon´s unauthorized search are Duck (Terrance Howard), his former cameraman, and Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg), a TV executive´s son looking to legitimize his interest in journalism. Along the way it´s reveled that Simon´s search for the mass murderer known as "The Fox" is less about covering a newsworthy story and more about Simon seeking revenge on the man behind the murder of his lover and unborn child. But in his search for atonement, Simon may have unwittingly handed over the lives of himself and his friends to the mysterious yet ubiquitous criminal known as "The Fox."

Whether it´s based on actual occurrences or not, the main plot line of "The Hunting Party" is annoyingly clichéd, and its attempts to stroke the heartstrings of its viewers will fall mainly upon deaf ears. It´s really hard to care about any of the characters in the film when the script they have to work with offers little in the way of characterization. Gere´s paper-thin portrayal of Simon as a burnt-out alcoholic dream chaser may have had just as much to do with his limitations as an actor as it does with writer/director´s Richard Shepard´s limitations as a script writer.

In addition to its characters, who exist solely as sound-bite spouting caricatures of their jobs or upbringing, the story development of "The Hunting Party" has little to offer audience members looking for something more than a TV movie-of-the-week take on the war in Bosnia. With the reporters constantly being caught or detained, the majority of the film resembles an episode of "Scooby-Doo." Simon and his group simply bounce from one near-death moment to the next, with little thought to the viewer´s investment in the plot progression. Each scene builds up to one of the captured character´s impending death, only to have him saved at the last minute by some inane act of fate. A prime example of the cheap way of saving our heroes is when a cell phone call stops a villain´s death strike; he is ready to decimate one of the hopeless trio and he stops to accept a cell phone call. That´s just some of the lazy writing that plagues this script.

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