SXSW 2012: Solid, Slow Burn Thriller ‘The Hunter’ Speaks Volumes

What would it be like to be the last of a species in the world, especially a world that scours the planet for rarities? It would be a threatened life, always on the move, even more so a rare creature living in the wild. That’s just one of the questions raised in Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter, a haunting yet balanced film with the vibe of The Edge and precision of The American. With a stunning performance by one of today’s best actors, it transcends its slow burn, a touch slower than necessary, to become a top-notch thriller, one that thankfully has something important to say. It’s anything but flawless, but, then again, the rarities in the world are hardly ever flawless. Willem Dafoe, that gargoyle God of acting—call it hyperbole, but that makes sense to me—stars as Martin David, a hunter hired by a biotech company to track down the last, …