Overrated and overhyped

Overrated

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Todd Jensen plays a journalist and ex-super soldier type who finds himself hunted by a group of South African rich men, and along the way Jensen falls for the girl (Michelle Bestbier) and the fight is on. Prey For The Hunter has adequate acting believe it or not, I mean they're not very good but they're merely wooden instead of laughable which makes it hard to enjoy as camp. Meanwhile the action sequences are completely lame. You would be hard pressed to find any excitement in any of the confrontations that take place on the screen and the movie is very badly photographed so that there is no mood, no sense of atmosphere and no landscape beauty to make the backdrop sort of interesting. Prey For The Hunter is just completely lifeless dreck, a movie that you suspect nobody enjoyed making. One thing about movies like this, is that there is sort of a nostalgia and when you're bored you sort of wonder how the actors now (having not worked in 15 years) tell their friends about their attempt to make it in showbiz, but with this,you suspect it was an unhappy experience for all involved. Todd Jensen did actually go on to make more movies but to my knowledge never in a starring role and it's kinda sad that his one big movie, is one nobody wants to remember. * out of 4-(Bad)

A low budget effort that takes it's cues from "The Most Dangerous Game" (itself not an expensive production). A handsome American journalist covering a war in conflict ridden Africa finds himself with zero resources. He does what most of us would do in this situation, and seeks out a nice cold bottle of beer. After meeting an attractive blond in a one oxen village watering hole he's invited by her husband to join their group on safari. Initially the pretty boy paperman is at ease, drinking the group's booze, eating their food, and putting the moves on his host's beautiful blond wife. "I'm good for it, my paper will re-reimburse any expenses" he claims. It isn't long before the group makes the journalist a proposition, to allow himself to be hunted with paint-ball guns. He agrees and of course you can see where this is headed.Showing himself to be more capable than his paint-ball pursuers the paperman starts talking trash each time the hunters are within earshot. Well, apparently the studly paperman's advances towards his wife were not a problem, but the trash talking, well that's another matter altogether and it proves too much for the group's leader. He produces a Colt 45 handgun and with little effort convinces the others in the party to engage in some good old fashioned people hunting. I guess they were equally annoyed by the cocky newsman's taunts.Well that's the set-up for what proves to be a rather mediocre film, mainly due to execution. The performances are uniformly fair. The storyline, always a favorite, is a good also, though dialog is standard fare. The main problem seems to be the mundane direction which results in lack of suspense. The action is weakly staged leaving the film with little excitement. The film could perhaps have benefited from a different director calling the shots.