War-Torn Amusement

The Hunting Party Directed by Richard Shepard

The Hunting Party, a misguided espionage spoof directed by Richard Shepard, needlessly insists on the veracity of its plot—and that tactic leads to its undoing. An opening title card insists that “only the absurd parts are true”—taking a stab at sly self-deconstruction—but the statement reads like an excuse note for inept storytelling. Take a weird-but-true adventure yarn and toy with it as you please, but, jeez, don’t apologize for it.

Based on Scott Anderson’s eccentrically composed October 2000 Esquire article, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” The Hunting Party flaunts its factual basis with gleeful stupidity, reducing the possibility that anything in its twisted plot can be taken seriously. In Anderson’s account, five journalists (including Sebastian Junger and John Falk) congregate in the Balkans to reminisce on shared moments in the field. Curiosity blooms at the revelation that, despite an indisputable end to the Bosnian war during the previous decade, the principle men responsible for the country’s genocide remain at large.

Spurred by some combination of objective moral duty and a crazed lieutenant colonel’s mistaking them for clandestine CIA agents, the men join forces to capture the worst of the elusive criminals.

Their posse does an impressive job of tracking the target, until the United States intervenes in the mission, providing a not-so-subtle implication that hidden international arrangements guarantee freedom for the bad guy. Written as a sort of editorialized travelogue, Anderson’s piece is a smooth read, constantly funny, engaging and loaded with political data. It takes less than half an hour to ingest the whole thing.

Shepard (who also wrote the script) denigrates the characters and their experiences, unsure when to trust the inherent humor or let the drama run its course. Instead of authentic motivation, he gives us cliché: Ex-television reporter Simon Hunt (Richard Gere, wearing a smirk on autopilot) careened into obscurity following an on-air breakdown while covering the genocide; his faithful cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) continued to climb the network’s ranks and lost touch with his deranged former colleague.

Simon resurfaces 10 years later, during another trip to the region, convincing Duck to accompany him on an exclusive Big Story, more or less establishing the scenario mentioned earlier. Rounding out the group, a bratty intern named Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg), convinces the team to let him come along for the journey. 

Don’t bother wondering why the script chooses to eschew a full-grown, veteran journalist for an incompetent kid (unnecessary comic relief may be the cause), but throughout the movie, he never grows believable. Spouting pretentious J-school ethics, the aspiring journo appears to have wandered out of Eurotrip.

The intriguing twist in Anderson’s story arrives when it becomes clear that the criminal can’t be caught because none of the related governments have any interest in catching him. The Hunting Party goes this route and rejects its irony, inserting a happier ending in the conclusion. Any moments of competent direction and amusing dialogue (there are a few early ones) become irrelevant as the movie veers into this dubiously cheery terrain.

Judging by the perky descriptiveness in the original article, it’s no surprise that Shepard was attracted to the production. The story resembles a levitated playfulness on display in Shepard’s nifty hit man comedy The Matador. The extreme stylization in that film worked in the favor of lead man Pierce Brosnan, burying his recently ditched Bond persona with quirky genre in-jokes.

But Shepard overly emphasizes the intrinsic absurdity of the material in his latest product; given the contemporary relevance of the actual events, his approach comes across as condescending. Just as The Matador saved Brosnan from the typecasting curse, Shepard needs to make a better film to save him from The Hunting Party.