2. Cool Family Trying To Save A Cool Animal
The Hunter is an iteration of the much-beloved and even more maligned convention of a family fighting against, whether they know it or not, the Man, and in this case as in many cases, its for a cool animal. This is a big childrens story convention, and movies eat it up. Beethoven. Free Willy. The Water Horse. Harry and the Hendersons. E.T. Even something like Old Yeller. A family finds a really cool animal or otherwise sentient creature, usually some kind of novelty or even a cryptid, and has to take it upon themselves to save the animal and sometimes the animals kind. There are certainly echoes of this in The Hunter. The presence and legacy of the tiger is all around the characters in every shot. The kids are cute and ready for a fun new pet with which to thwart the curmudgeonly school principal, evil aunt, or local crime boss. You half-expect the tiger to pop out at any time in a cute and humorous scene and the kids to hide it in their garage, feeding it beef jerky as it licks them until the parents get home and freak out. The tiger only needs to show itself for the shenanigans to begin. And like other movies about cool families, there are additional would-be hunters besides Martin looking for the cool animal. There is the villainous Red Leaf, the well-meaning but unwieldy Australian government, and the greenies it employs. But Lucy, Sass, and Bike all play different roles in this narrative than we are usually familiar with. All three of them know that Jarrah saw a Tasmanian tiger, but force Martin to draw the information out of them. Bike, the closest to Martin of them all, observes and even helps Martin try to find the tiger. Sass, one point removed, talks openly about the tiger but doesnt really care about what happens to it (or to discuss specifics) and takes its existence for granted outside of fun dinner conversation with strangers. She just wants to find her dad. Lucy holds a larger truth about her husband, and hopes for the tigers well-being, but also keeps most of what she knows to herself. The whole family as well as the greenies want to help the tiger, but because this is the real world, they are powerless, with more pressing concerns like survival (again, the emotional both creating and juxtaposed with the exotic environment), and the one who feels the pain of this the most is the man trying to hunt the tiger down. Bike is perhaps the only character in the movie who can still believe in larger ideas despite what he does understand, and it is debatable whether he keeps this outlook by the time the credits roll. By not sugarcoating the plight of the hunted animal of the movie with impossible happy endings, the movie brings about a profound realization about life, the order of Mother Nature and the order of humanity, and the odds of making a differencemore specifically, where a difference can be made. The characters arent just fighting for present comfort, theyre fighting for everything, and that leads to different implications. This most prominently sets up the final moment of the movie. In a world where bad things happen and where no one can make a difference, the final realization is at once overwhelmingly beautiful, heart-wrenching, and inspirational