The Hunting Party

Plot synopsis:
The film begins with a disclaimer: Only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true.
After years of covering one armed conflict after another, American journalist Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) is in Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 1994 reporting on the Bosnian War. In parallel, he has managed to romance a local Muslim girl who is pregnant with his child. However, in the late stages of her pregnancy, she is killed by the Bosnian Serb forces when they overrun her village. Upon seeing the carnage, Simon vows revenge on the Bosnian Serb political leader Dragoslav Bogdanović —known as "The Fox".
Reporting on the gruesome event later that day in a live remote link-up, Simon loses his composure at the network anchor Franklin Harris' (James Brolin) suggestion that the Serb attack may have been a reaction to Muslim provocation attacks from inside the village. As a result of his on-air meltdown, Simon's journalistic career takes a tumble. While his professional prospects spiral downhill, those of his long-time camera man Duck (Terrence Howard) go in the opposite direction. Duck gets a cushy job at the network, while Hunt is left following war after war, as a freelancer, in an attempt to get back on US network television map.
In fall 2000, Duck, now a professional, travels to Sarajevo to shoot a "puff piece" of the network anchor Franklin Harris covering the fifth anniversary of the Dayton Agreement, along with fresh-out-of-Harvard young journalist, and son of the network vice-president, Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg). Duck runs into old buddy Simon. Once a US network star reporter, Simon is by this point, a desperate half-drunk cynic reduced to filing freelance reports for underfunded news outlets in places like Jamaica and Poland.
All the while, he's looking for a story big enough to propel him back to the realm of credibility. He tells Duck that, through a source, he has located Bogdanović, who is now wanted for war crimes with a US$5 million bounty on his head, and that he'd be interested in trying to score an interview with the fugitive. The Fox is assumed to be in the village of Čelebići in Serbian entity of Bosnia, near the border with Montenegro with various stories circulating about him, such as that he enjoys fox hunting (hence the nickname) and that the head of his security detail is a ruthless psychopath with a tattooed forehead.
Convinced by Simon, Duck comes along to shoot the interview, with Benjamin in tow. On the way, Simon confesses his plan to capture the Fox to collect the bounty — something Duck and Benjamin consider insane even to think about. Along the way, the group is mistaken for a CIA hit squad by several groups, including the United Nations police force and the Serbs themselves; at one point, at the initiative of Benjamin, they claim to be CIA agents themselves, using a threat to avoid paying a fee for a tip. Still, Boris (Mark Ivanir), the local area UN commander, puts them in touch with a woman claiming to have been romantically involved with the Fox's main bodyguard Srđan.
Simon, Duck, and Benjamin are then captured by the Fox's guards and taken to a barn to be executed where axe-wielding Srđan — who has the phrase "умро пре рођења" ('died before birth') tattooed on his forehead in Cyrillic alphabet—is preparing to kill them through torture. At the last moment, a team of CIA assassins, tipped off by Boris, storms the barn and frees the journalists, but Fox escapes. It quickly becomes evident to the journalists that, even in the international community, there are people who do not wish the Fox to be captured.
The CIA orders the journalists to board an airplane bound for the US but they run away to carry out their plan to catch the Fox. They capture him while he is hunting in the woods without his guards. The journalists then release him, with his hands securely bound, in a village called Polje filled with the surviving family members of victims of his war crimes, where he is lynched by the vengeful mob.
As the movie ends, before the closing credits, the screen goes to black and the following message is shown:
In theory, the official hunt for war criminals in Bosnia continues to this day...However, the two most wanted men — Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, continue to elude the U.S, The United Nations, The European Union, NATO, The Hague and all in the civilized world who claim to be looking for them. In the ten years that Radovan Karadžić has been on the run, he has published two books and one play Perhaps if the International Community opened a summerstock theatre...But they're probably too busy "searching" for Osama Bin Laden.
Ratko Mladić was arrested on 26 May 2011 and Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade on 21 July 2008 and brought before Belgrade's War Crimes Court a few days later.
The film ends and is then followed by a montage of people and events seen in the movie with words such as 'really existed' flashed across the screen as various characters are shown throughout the film.

Tags: violence, revenge, murder, sadist, romantic

Review:
One of those "lost" films that only shows up on cable once in a while, THE HUNTING PARTY is a blood soaked western that is an obvious response to Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH.
Made in 1971 by Don Medford and starring a young Candice Bergen, a vicious Gene Hackman, and Oliver Reed with an American accent.
But when you steal his "property", you sign your own death warrant.That is something that a notorious outlaw (Oliver Reed) and his gang have to learn in the worst way possible in THE HUNTING PARTY, a 1971 British/American western that, even by 21st century standards, is still incredibly violent.
And as he is a man driven by extreme jealousy (Bergen is his personal "property", whom he physically abuses on more than one occasion), the fact that Bergen is beginning to develop a rapport with Reed now gives him whatever license he feels he needs to kill her as well, though he drags it out for the sheer sadistic fun of it to a very cynical and blood-splattered conclusion.There isn't too much doubt that THE HUNTING PARTY was made to take advantage of the "market" opened up by THE WILD BUNCH and its director Sam Peckinpah's choreography of violent action, as well the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone.
Where THE HUNTING PARTY falls short, however, is in a crucial area that Peckinpah knew was vital to his film being successful: the action and plot must be character-driven and made to feel real to an audience.
Absent the complex psychological and character-driven narrative that propelled THE WILD BUNCH to a controversial but well-deserved glory, THE HUNTING PARTY can so easily be tagged, as more than a few critics have done (albeit perhaps too zealously), as an extremely bloody sagebrush shooting gallery in which violence is staged for the sake of violence.The film does succeed in giving us good performances from the three leads (notably Hackman, whose role is credibly sadistic to the highest degree); good cinematography done on location in Spain (as a stand-in for Texas); and supporting roles for L.Q. Jones (a member of Peckinpah's stock company); Simon Oakland; Mitchell Ryan; and William C.
And one can't fault the long-distance shooting that occurs, or the way it so ingeniously borrows a great old-world story (THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME) and puts it into a WILD BUNCH-type western format.
Had the filmmakers only paid a bit more attention to complex characters and motives here as Peckinpah had in his epic film, however, THE HUNTING PARTY might have been a bit more than a good, if incredibly and graphically violent, post-Peckinpah/Leone addition to a Western genre that was rapidly changing during the late 1960s and early 1970s..
Oliver Reed is stunning as Frank Calder, the tough leader of an outlaw gang who wants to learn to read.
Though his friends start to sicken of the game and beg him to stop, Rudger won't be deterred from the game.As the movie develops, Oliver Reed's scenes crackle with tension, energy, and a depth of sexuality that may surprise those who are more familiar with his roles as the heavy or antagonist.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It has a good plot, albeit obviously a response to "The Wild Bunch" and basically just another (western) interpretation of the legendary classic "The Most Dangerous Game", the cast is excellent with both Gene Hackman and Oliver Reed in great shape and there's plenty of rough and gritty violence.
Gene Hackman was never as vicious as here in this movie, portraying Brandt Ruger; a rich, obnoxious and egocentric bank owner who enjoys throwing hunting parties for his selected circle of equally depraved and wealthy friends.
When a posse of bandits, led by the ever handsome Oliver Reed, kidnaps his wife, Brandt alters the route of their planned hunting trip and goes after them.
Not so much because he loves his wife (played by the ravishing Candice Bergen), as he actually neglects and abuses her all the time, but because he's Brandt Ruger and nobody is supposed to touch what belongs to him.
The three leads are amazing and "The Hunting Party" comes with my highest possible recommendation if it were only for witnessing the final showdown between Reed and Hackman, two of the greatest actors that ever lived..
Gene Hackman and Oliver Reed face off in this hard-hitting Western from Don Medford (!).
When the outlaw named Frank (Oliver Reed) kidnaps his wife (Candice Bergen) for teaching him to read, Hackman forms the hunting group.
It´s a cool flick about an outlaw (Reed) who kidnappes rich farmers (Hackman) wife, but soon find himself attracted to his beatyfull hostage, while he finds himselv mercyless hunted by the enraged husband.
The version I watched, the MGM DVD issued in 2005, includes the scenes that IMDb lists as cut from earlier, European versions.>>> Mild Spoiler follows <<<Gene Hackman's character, Brandt, is obsessed with punishing the men who kidnapped his young wife.
Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman)is a rich farmer who clearly doesn't give a damn about his wife (Candice Bergen).
After he have left on a hunting trip, his wife who helps out the school teacher is kidnapped by a gang of outlaws so she can teach their leader Frank (Oliver Reed) to read.
Infuriated and equipped with the long range rifles he and his rich pals for a hunting party with the mission to kill the entire gang and save his wife.This must be one of the darkest films ever made.
When Frank Calder steals his wife Ruger and his men start hunting down the gang.
Gene Hackman plays land baron Brandt Ruger, an amoral sadist living in the rural town that bears his surname, who leads a somewhat-leery pack of well-wrought gentleman friends on a hunt to kill the gunslingers responsible for kidnapping his wife (he also appears to want his wife killed as well, since she's obviously been raped and now may be carrying a bastard child!).
The "Hunting Party" of the title is led by coward rancher Brandt (Gene Hackman), who along with his gang, track down the dangerous bandit Frank Calder (Oliver Reed), kidnapper of Brandt's wife (Candice Bergen).
Brandt's reckless hunt to Calder (who has a bigger group of men) has one point in his favor: a collection of special rifles that can shoot to long distances, an unseen invention at the time, and unknown to Frank and his pals.No heroes, no villains.
The movie feels staggered for a long time, the plot takes a whole while to reach its best and most exciting parts - the hunting - but we can't deny that Don Medford made an impressive picture, filled with action, gory slow-motion shootouts like Mr. Sam P., with brief humored scenes (all effective) and greatly acted by Reed, Hackman, Mitchell Ryan and Bergen.
Frank Calder and his gang kidnap the rich rancher tyrant Brandt Ruger's wife Melissa.
On a hunting party with some wealthy friends, Brandt learns about this and their sights turn on Frank his men to demonstrate their new high-powered rifles that can shoot from over 800 yards.
Her husband Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman) pursues the gang with a hunting party, aided by the latest and greatest rifles which can blow a man apart from long range.
Violence is not glamorized in any means  and the film has moments that people in support of gun control would envy (i.e. Reed is forced to shoot his best friend, played by an excellent Mitchell Ryan, who is dying.
There is also another scene in the film where one member of the hunting party is seen vomiting after he has massacred several of Reed's gang members.
A straight off the 'French Connection pre- Poseidon Adventure Gene Hackman is the wealthy and salacious Rancher Brandt Ruger who departs on a hunting party leaving his beautiful trophy teacher wife a post 'Soldier Blue' Candice Bergan she's abducted by the famous outlaw Frank Calder a superb Oliver Reed who is looking to be taught how to read by Bergan.
But this 1971 movie is a western and there are no similarities between the two.Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman) is a rich, ruthless, cruel, sadistic, womanizer rancher who sadomises his wife Melissa Ruger (Candice Bergen).
Candice Bergen looks beautiful.Another mention should be made of the original score, sound and songs  all are very pleasing and nice.If someone wants to see a real good western action movie  this could be the one, to spend an afternoon or evening on.(Stars 6.75 out of 10).
The genre is Western, the ripoff is of "The Wild Bunch," and excitement is distinctly lacking as a deep-south Oliver Reed kidnaps stressed-looking Candice Bergen (pretty much all she does is look stressed) so that the mysteriously dislikeable Gene Hackman can come and kill everyone with his newfangled high-powered rifles.
Oliver Reed has kidnapped Gene's wife, Candy Bergen.
Hunting Party, The (1971) * (out of 4) This Western is pretty much forgotten by everyone except for fans of violence and gore, which this thing has plenty of.
The story centers on a bandit (Oliver Reed) who kidnaps a teacher (Candice Bergen) so that she can teach him to read but her sadistic husband (Gene Hackman) is worried about her being raped and bringing home a bastard child so he and his friends form a hunting party and using their long-ranged rifles go after the men.
It's an awfully flawed movie: beautifully photographed locations alternating with appallingly cheap process shots, a totally wasted supporting cast of wonderful character actors (Mitchell Ryan, L.Q. Jones, Simon Oakland, G.D Spradling), main leads with different acting styles that don't completely jell (with Reed being the most exaggerated, Hackman the most effective, Bergen the most detached), and violence so horrifyingly mean and relentless that it kicks down the rather slim scaffolding in which the movie is built (and which was reused again in "The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing", another Bill Norton-scripted movie).
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).
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.
Candice Bergen is the poor wife of sadistic Gene Hackman.
When Hackman learns that Oliver Reed and friends have kidnapped his wife, he proposes a "Hunting Party" to take them out.
Q. Jones and the good Mitchell Ryan kidnap the bride of the wealthy Western entrepreneur and big game hunter, Gene Hackman.
Occasionally bloody and nail-biting Western performed by a great cast -- Hackman, Reed, Bergen, Oakland and LQ Jones (one of Peckinpah's favourites).
Hackman plays a rich, impotent brute whose wife (Bergen) is kidnapped by Reed.
Substituting his limp penis with a long gun that can shoot eight hundred yards, Hackman and his wealthy buddies start hunting Reed and his band of horny miscreants at long range.What's admirable here is the way director Medford handles both Bergen's developing relationship with Reed (shades of Stockholm Syndrome) and Hackman's gradual realization that he can't compete with the younger man on any level.The score, by Riz Ortolani (CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST), is sensational, and perfectly captures the sense of big trouble in a harsh land and the bloody inevitability of these men's lives.Aside from the inclusion of some awful process shots on an exterior train scene, the film's technical credits are top notch and cinematographer Cecilio Paniagua's dusty vistas are powerfully evocative.For me, the film's stand-out dramatic scene is Reed's "rape" of Bergen and its ambiguous aftermath.Pretty damn good..
The first hurdle to overcome for this viewer had to do with the idea that Melissa Ruger (Candice Bergen) could actually fall for an outlaw thug like Frank Calder (Oliver Reed).
The cattle baron is Brandt Ruger(Gene Hackman), his wife, Melissa(..the lovely Candice Bergen).
So Ruger assembles a group of his friends as a hunting party to seek after Frank and his outlaws, not knowing until much later that Melissa has become quite attached and affectionate towards her kidnapper.
But, if you want your fix of bloody violence with plenty of people blown away by long range rifles(..mostly by Hackman, who's a crack shot), then "The Hunting Party" might just be what the doctor ordered.
Like a lot westerns coming out in the 70's, I reckon "The Hunting Party" suffered as the genre was starting to wain, it very much an example of "The Wild Bunch" influence..
The movie contained an existential story, disguised as the story of a queen (Melissa) kidnapped by a charming thief (Frank, played by Oliver Reed), where the king (Brandt, played by Gene Hackman) following them to rescue the queen became a vile avenger, which in its turn was disguised as a story with guns and cowboy hats; but the chain of disguises became along the way somewhat sloppy.
Well, the more I think about the movie under this allegorical reading, the better it seems...Other things that bothered me about The Hunting Party were some random scenes of overacting (like the whole scene of Doc's death, where everybody seemed to have suddenly moved from the Western desert into a Shakespearean play on Broadway), mixed with moments of natural tenderness and human awkwardness (like the scene with the peaches, or like the love/rape scene between Melissa and Frank).
**SPOILERS** Coming across like a combination between "The Searchers" and "Wild Bunch" the western revenge movie "The Hunting Party" never quite matches, in blood gore and bullet ridden body's and body parts, either one of those movies.
Not that it lacks the vital ingredients of both but because it's so ridiculous that you have a hard time believing it.Riding through the town of Ruger outlaw Frank Calder, Oliver Reed, and his gang of desperado's kidnap Mellissa Ruger, Candice Bergen, for the sole purpose, in mistaking her for an elementary school teacher, of teaching Frank to read!
Getting the shocking news that his old lady, Mellissa, had been kidnapped Brandt shoots right back to Ruger, with his not too willing friends, to track and gun down Mellissa's kidnappers as well as save her from a fate worse then death; Being gang raped by Frank and his motley crew.Gunning down, at long range, most of Frank's men Brandt is shocked to later find out-from one of them- that his pretty and abused, mostly by him, wife has fallen in love with that dirty foul mouth and illiterate slob Frank Calder!
With the big winning prize, since by then a couple dozen persons had been killed over her, being non other then Brandt's kidnapped wife and Frank's lover the beautiful and now suffering from a serious case of sun stroke Mellissa Ruger!Not that bad of of film if you don't take it at all seriously and just watch it for laughs which I think that "The Hunting Party" was really intended for.
Oliver Reed kidnaps schoolmarm Candice Bergen and finds himself and his band of motley outlaws pursued by Bergen's lunatic husband (Gene Hackman).
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.
*** SPOILERS *** I liked the first half of this movie, bolstered by an excellent cast of Hackman, Reed and Bergen.