Better Late Then Never

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

There are things I liked about Iranian drama 'The Hunted': the scenes of quiet dialogue, where the meaning lies in what's not said, or the surreal waiting-for-Godot quality that the movie takes on as it nears its end. It's also interesting to see an Iran of stormy coasts and rain-swept forests, far from the classical image of a land of deserts. But the first half of the film is overly quiet and slow, and there are also a number of low-key scenes that have self-evidently been written and shot that way not for effect, but for budgetary reasons: the car chase, for example, is supremely low-energy, while other critical moments occur off-camera. More than anything else, however, the film is let down mostly by its odd plot, and the seemingly random motivations of its characters. It feels like the debut feature of someone with more than a few ideas, but without the practice of how to actually make them work as a film.

Ali is an ex-convict who on release from prison returns home to the city of Tehran. Reconnecting his fragmented family of wife and daughter, he finds a job working night shifts to provide. Tehran, depicted as an urban jungle fraught with dissent and unrest, becomes like a 'prison' to Ali, and he manages to hold on to his sanity by going away to the forest North of the city, as often as he can, to hunt.One day Ali's wife and daughter go missing. After a tense and lengthy procedure to try and locate them, he learns from the Police that they have been killed in the cross-fire of a city gun fight between Police officers and an Insurgent group. There is an ambiguity surrounding Ali's wife and daughter; around their origin (is she really his daughter); and concerning their ultimate fates.Ali almost breaks but manages to retain some sense of his sanity by instead breaking from the state. He takes his hunting rifle and staking out a highway road from a hill top, he kills two random police officers. He leaves Tehran and goes on the run only to be tracked by a police helicopter which eventually leads to a high speed car chase when his car is spotted on a foggy mountain road by a patrol-car. Captured by two policemen after a deep forest pursuit, the three of them find themselves lost. Wandering in frustration through dense mountain forest, their is a shift in the dynamics between the Policemen and Ali, and a deadly conflict between the two officers gradually surfaces.It is a striking and tense, emotional thriller with long periods (sequence after sequence beautifully shot) absent of dialogue which makes the film all the more fully engaging.

As this film opens we see protagonist Ali, a hunter, loading his rifle in a forest; we then learn that he works as a night watchman at a factory in Tehran. He is married with a young daughter. His life is fairly mundane until one day he gets a phone call from the police; it turns out his wife have been killed in the crossfire in a shootout between the police and insurgents; they have no idea what happened to his daughter though. Ali then sets about looking for his young daughter without any luck; eventually he learns that she too has died. Sitting on a hill above a busy dual-carriageway he takes out his rifle and fires at a police car; it swerves and comes to a halt, then he shoots and kills the policeman who gets out. He flees the city but is caught by two cops in the forest. By the time they have caught up with him though they are well and truly lost; one of them wants to kill Ali for what he has done but the other won't let him; as tensions rise it looks as though the two policemen are a danger to each other as well as Ali… inevitably it will end in tragedy.Inevitably much of this films interest comes not from its contents but from the fact that it was made in the Islamic Republic of Iran; not a country most westerners would associate with film making. I suspect the biggest surprise for most viewers will be the fact that the characters don't seem that much different to those who might appear in a film made in the west. That isn't to say the film looks like something that came out of Hollywood; it certainly doesn't. The pace is much, much slower, there is almost no music and there is little explanation… for example we aren't told how the two policemen realised Ali was the man they were after and we don't see the moment they catch him; one moment they are chasing him the next he has his hands tied behind his back. Rafi Pitts does a fine job as Ali; a man who is clearly broken by what happened to his family and barely cares what will happen to him once he is caught. Overall I'd say that while this isn't the most exciting thriller it is worth watching if only for the glimpse it provides into a country that rarely gets positive coverage.

This movie played at the International Film Festival in Berlin this year and it was in the official program/selection! A drama about a family living in a very disturbing time and regime. But don't expect the movie to give you some easy answers or an easy plot to follow. This is a difficult film, but that's the way they should be (with a theme like that).Of course you could argue, that the ending isn't the one you would imagine, but hopefully the movie has gotten to you until this point, so that you can identify with the persons at some basic level. I liked it and I think it has some very interesting questions (that again won't be answered in the movie). Not an easy movie then, but if that's your cup of tea, you will be very pleased here