Don't Believe the Hype

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I watched this film and kept watching it because of my faith in the main actors. They did not let me down. They are terrific and so are those in supporting roles. But they are working with a flawed story and a flawed script. Three quarters way through, the film starts to drag as basically the same thing keeps happening with predictable symmetry. Reed's companions die off and Hackman's leave him. Hackman and Reed are what the story is about and the hangers on, stuck to each of them, become an irrelevance to be got rid of by the script writers so that the story can reach its climax and conclusion. The fundamental flaw in the story is the barely, if at all, discussed willingness of Hackman's hunting party to go after the kidnappers rather than the animal prey. These are rich, "respectable" pillars of society - not the criminals, murderers or dubious posse characters often depicted in such a manhunt in westerns. That does not make them honourable or give them a conscience but they would think twice, big time, if invited to go on a lynching rather than a planned animal hunt. The ending would have been much more interesting if Reed had used his ingenuity to counter Hackman's long range technology ; if he had thought up an ingenious plan to attack his pursuers, and give Hackman (and us) more of a run for his money than just run, fade away into deep sand.

Something like "The Hunting Party" wouldn't be for everybody. With all of the slo-mo gunshot wounds, the sight of various victims in agony, and the element of rape rearing its ugly head more than once, some people are going to find it unappealing and unendurable. Still, those who are big fans of "The Wild Bunch", and don't mind stories with a nihilistic feel, should find this to be somewhat interesting.Oliver Reed (oddly cast, but not bad) plays Frank Calder, an American outlaw whose gang kidnaps Melissa Ruger (Candice Bergen), a young woman married to rancher Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman). As the story plays out, she actually becomes more attached to Frank, because her relationship with Brandt is not a loving one. Brandt is an extremely determined man, so when he gets wind of Melissas' kidnapping he swings into action, using a revolutionary high powered rifle and his hunting buddies as the rest of his posse.We'll see that, for all of his flaws, Frank has a sensitive, caring side, and is really a more appealing character than Brandt, who doesn't so much care for his wife as get angry that his property was taken from him and will get "spoiled".Only some draggy pacing ("The Hunting Party" doesn't need to be quite as long as it is) works against the film. It's a viscerally effective experience that may have the viewer fascinated in spite of themselves. The evolving relationship between outlaw and wife forms the core of the story, and Reed & Bergen play it very well. Hackman is solid in a cold-blooded true force-of-nature role (who lines up his victims as if they're game) and the supporting cast includes such familiar faces as Simon Oakland, Mitch Ryan, L.Q. Jones (in one of his most depraved roles ever), William Watson, and G.D. Spradlin. It's extremely well shot, at wonderful locations throughout the desert of Spain. It actually doesn't miss an opportunity for humour as Reed and Ryan tease the hungry Bergen by eating peaches in front of her, but for the most part it's a *very* sobering film all the way to its ending. The train with the bordello is a rather amusing touch. The music by Riz Ortolani ("Cannibal Holocaust") is absolutely beautiful.This one doesn't seem to be too well known nowadays, so Western fans who can take a lot of blood and unpleasantness would be well advised to seek it out. You certainly don't come away unaffected after watching this.Seven out of 10.

Violence escalated in Hollywood movies by the late 1960s with the shoot-out in "Bonnie & Clyde" and later the bloodbath that celebrated masculinity gone berserk in Sam Peckinpah's seminal masterpiece "The Wild Bunch." Presumably, this must have inspired Jules Levy and Arthur Gardner, well known for their family oriented television series "The Rifleman," to produce this riveting western shoot'em. When you consider the wealth of talent that went into this western lensed mainly on the plains of Spain, you have to wonder how such a project could have suffered so badly with critics and audiences alike. Scenarists William Norton of "Brannigan," Gilbert Ralston of "Willard," and Lou Morheim of "The Last Blitzkrieg" definitely put their best pens forward. No sooner has illiterate outlaw Frank Calder (Oliver Reed of "The Three Musketeers") kidnapped a gorgeous woman, Melissa Ruger (Candice Bergen of "Soldier Blue"), so she can teach him how to read than the woman's hypocritical husband (Gene Hackman) pursues them with a vengeance. The husband is no ordinary individual. He is cattle baron Brandt Ruger, and he has just bought some Sharps rifles that can blast a man from twice the distance of a Winchester repeating rifle. Brandt is basically a sadist with a trophy wife and possessive streak a mile wide. Once he learns that his wife has been abducted, Brandt fears the worst. He hates the idea that Melissa will be raped and impregnated with an illegitimate child. The suggestion that Brandt might be impotent aroused my suspicions. He doesn't want to get stuck with raising a bastard. All of this occurs after Ruger has launched a hunting party with several prominent friends and a train-load of prostitutes. He decides to chase Calder and company, but he isn't so much concerned with rescuing Melissa as he is with blasting all to kingdom come. That Brandt is a sadist is clear from the outset. Director Don Medford establishes this characteristic brilliantly in the first few minutes when he cross-cuts shots of Calder and his gang carving up one of Brandt's steers with Brandt reaming Melissa out in their bedroom. Ironically, Melissa finds more compassion in the veteran outlaw.Ingeniously, "The Hunting Party" scrutinizes masculinity under-fire in what initially struck me as a mindless massacre but is far more substantial than I imagined. Ruger relishes the chance to kill Calder and his cutthroats with extreme prejudice. Calder and his men are taken aback to begin with because they cannot see their adversaries sniping away at them. Not long afterward, the gang turns on each other. By this time, in a riff on The Stockholm Syndrone, Melissa and Calder develop a mutually supportive relationship, and Brandt is predictably infuriated when his worst fears are confirmed by dying outlaw Hog Warren (L.Q. Jones of "The Wild Bunch")who Brandt stabs to death in the throat. Medford doesn't rely on exploding blood squibs. They smear blood all over their victims. By the time that Ruger and his companions have begun to whittle down the outlaws, "The Hunting Party" generates far more depth than its deceptively gratuitous violence suggests. The ending is particularly audacious. Ruger is so consumed with hate that he consigns himself to death by traipsing into the desert to kill both Calder and Melissa. The performances are exception and the line-up of western character actors who play Calder's gang is second to none. Oliver Reed delivers another stunning performance; Reed was incapable of giving a bad performance. Sadly, this rugged British actor never received the recognition that his distinguished colleagues got in the form of knight-ships! Hackman rivaled him. After the first hour, you'll wonder why the outlaws neglect to lure the hunters into an ambush and kill them. Particularly incredible is the hero who disarms himself because he had to put his best friend out of his misery after having been shot by Ruger's men. When I first saw it I loved the violence, then I turned against it later because I treated it like a derivative western with little to set it apart from other gory oaters. Now, I consider it a maligned, misunderstood horse opera that defied narrative and genre expectations. Challenging and interesting, "The Hunting Party" had more on its plate than even Peckinpah's masterpiece.

A group of hired gunmen travelling north to participate in a range war (presumambly someplace like Kansas or Wyoming, as the story by all accounts seem to take place in the early 1880's) kidnap a hapless woman from a small town while her husband, a mean, sadistic sonofabitch cattle baron, is engaged in a hunting trip with his upper class buddies. Few people in any kind of audience, then or now, would have trouble spelling out this kind of plot in advance, how the woman will fall in love with her kidnapper while the husband realizes she's lost to him forever, but, seeing how this is a 44. Magnum, the most powerful handg- hey, waitaminute. Seeing how this is the pessimistic and violent movie world of the early 70's we're talking about, if it's going to be predictable, you can at least be sure it's going to be bloody and grim and nihilistic in the process.You know it's a grim movie you're going to see when it opens with a shot of Gene Hackman roughing up his wife a little in that particularly mean-spirited way that made him such an endearing villain in the early 70's (and which he reprised for Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN winning his second Oscar) intercut with shots of a cow being slaughtered. At least director Don Medford is upfront about it. The movie remains pretty unflinching in the portrayal of violence. Almost every actor is propped with blood squibs at some point in the film while others not lucky to be shot out of horses in slow motion get knives in their necks and buckshot in their faces. The Hunting Party is dinstictly a product of its time, a loyal retracing of the steps back to THE WILD BUNCH instead of taking the genre to new areas, belonging to that particularly bloody and violent American western niche that followed in the wake of Peckinpah's film (along with others like Chato's Land, The Revengers, The Deadly Trackers etc). Subverting and taking off the rose-tinted glasses the far west mythos was seen with by people like John Wayne, who cared so much about perceived values and ideals he had to make RIO BRAVO in response to Gary Cooper throwing down his star in HIGH NOON, taking a closer, more realistic look, if not at authentic period detail, then at least at how people were shot and killed.All blood and clamor aside however, The Hunting Party is just not a very good movie. Medford's average-to-poor direction and the fact it's 20 minutes too long make sure it won't be seeing top lists anytime soon. And then there's the script. That Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman) curiously refrains from shooting Frank Calder, the man who kidnapped his wife and whom he specifically set out to kill, when he gets plenty of chances to do so, seems to occur for no other reason than to stretch a final showdown that could have taken place in the first half hour into almost two hours. The acting is in turns okay and wooden, generally of the 'good enough' or 'will have to do' variety. Oddly enough for a cast featuring a man who would go on to win the Oscar that same year for THE FRENCH CONNECTION and kickstart a brilliant career, the best thing about The Hunting Party is a man who made a career out playing Athos in The Three Musketeers. Oliver Reed looks just right for the part, in a role that would be played probably by Richard Boone 20 years earlier and Javier Bardem twenty years later. When he tries to emote and just do anything that doesn't involve looking mean and badass, he faulters, but he looks mean and badass for all but maybe 2 minutes in the film.