Coming out later this month from Kino Lorber is the final film of superstar Steve McQueen, who would pass away from cancer just a few months after the release of THE HUNTER (97 mins., 1980, PG).
A loose adaptation of the life and times of real modern-day bounty hunter Ralph “Papa” Thorson, “The Hunter” offers a quintessential McQueen role of a tough guy who will stop at nothing – including mass destruction – to bring in a variety of fugitives across the country. These include a wise young LeVar Burton and the son of hard-working restaurateurs who ends up fleeing from McQueen in a dizzying chase throughout the city of Chicago, most notably on train tracks, all backed to the jazzy strains of Michel Legrand’s score (except for said Windy City sequence, which was replaced with a rescore by a credited Charles Bernstein).
There’s some notable action set-pieces executed by McQueen and director Buzz Kulik (though reports have it the actor handled most of the film himself), plus an attempt at a dramatic undercurrent involving Papa’s younger, pregnant girlfriend (the lovely Kathryn Harrold), whose life is put in jeopardy by one of Thorson’s former subjects (Tracey Walter), who’s out for revenge.
“The Hunter” was a troubled production that was originally written by prolific TV scribes Richard Levinson and William Link (“Columbo”), then revised by Peter Hyams, who was supposed to direct. Hyams was tossed from the project though he’s still credited on the script, along with Link and Levinson’s pseudonym “Ted Leighton.”
What’s unfortunate is that McQueen and Hyams didn’t get along, since this picture cries out for an injection of cinematic style that’s nearly entirely absent from the finished product. The interior scenes look like something out of ‘70s network television, over-lit and so plainly shot that there’s little separating the movie from your average episode of “Eight is Enough.” These visuals are so dated that, just showing this picture to someone who wasn’t aware of its release date, you’d expect them to peg this as a movie from a different, earlier era altogether.
That could be a compliment for some movies, but here, “The Hunter” seems out of time in terms of its approach – making it doubly disappointing Hyams, who was coming off widescreen thrillers like “Capricorn One,” didn’t make the picture instead. Yes, some of the action sequences and stunts are still effective and reasonably well-choreographed – and there’s a fun running gag involving Papa’s terrible driving – but in order to appreciate “The Hunter” as a modest goodbye to McQueen and his storied career, one’s expectations firmly have to be in check.
Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray offers a stellar new 4K scan of the original camera negative (1.85) that’s a major upgrade on the older Paramount master seen streaming and in Imprint’s Blu-Ray from last year. Colors and details are clearer throughout, while mono sound and a new commentary by Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson is heavy on an analysis of the superstar’s legacy.
