Henry Cavill and Academy Award® winner* Ben Kingsley star in the pulse-pounding thriller NIGHT HUNTER, now available on Blu-ray and DVD October 15, 2019 from Paramount Home Entertainment. Here is my review of the blu-ray:
When police detective Marshall (Henry Cavill) and local vigilante Cooper (Ben Kingsley) arrest a serial killer targeting women, they discover his game has just begun. The hunt is on as the murderer masterminds a series of deadly attacks from behind bars. Now in a desperate race against time, Marshall and Cooper fight to stay one step ahead of their suspect’s deadly plan. Also starring Alexandra Daddario (“True Detective”) and Golden Globe winner** Stanley Tucci, NIGHT HUNTER is an action-packed thriller that will shock you at every turn.
Review:
Did you know Nathan Fillion is in this movie? There’s absolutely NO reason to include him in this cast and he does hardly anything to warrant his inclusion, which is still apparently on my mind and confuses me greatly. But Nathan Fillion is in this – and he does have a few lines of dialog, but why? I’m deducting half a point for this confusion by the way. Onto the film – Night Hunter is kinda awesome for being a movie that absolutely nobody asked for and were apparently ANGRY at for existing. So if you look up reviews for director David Raymond’s serial killer thriller, you’ll end up dismissing a potentially wonderfully twisted experience.
Night Hunter begins with a pedophile hunter played by Ben Kingsley doing his pedophile hunter thing and that’s where I assumed the film would take me, but it only takes about 20 minutes or so before the flick makes a few drastic turns and now Henry Cavill (in his world’s most angry police detective mode) is investigating a serial killer who inadvertently becomes involved after clashing with the pedophile hunter’s plans to get all that glorious pedophile hunting time in. He castrates people too. This dude goes hard and this movie pulls no punches.
Brendan Fletcher plays the main person of interest in the serial killer case and he might be pulling off the performance of his career in this sucker. He goes for it hard in every single scene and he’s playing a part that can be very unforgiving considering the genre-bending darkness of the plot. Fletcher is in a lot of movies and he’s always good, but in Night Hunter he steals the show with one of the most demented performances of the year. While I love Cavill, he’s pretty vanilla and looks like he’s just collecting a paycheque for most of the runtime and although Stanley Tucci is solid, his character never develops and the same can be said for True Detective legend Alexandra Daddario. She plays another police investigator who doesn’t have much to do either, although she does have one pretty intense and wild interrogation sequence with Fletcher’s character that I loved (she even threatens to remove her top for some reason – NO DON’T – WHAT IS HAPPENING? LOL).
The film is also paced well and looks incredible. Night Hunter appeared cheap at first glance when I viewed the trailer but the film looks REAL and REAL damn good when you get immersed into the experience. Although the plot does feel a bit disjointed, the reveals and twists were pretty cool I thought overall. Night Hunter is a refreshing thriller and even though much of the cast didn’t do anything to excel the material, the script and direction from David Raymond is solid enough that the end results are absolutely worth the price of admission.
Rating: 3.5/5
Note: There are no special features but the Blu-ray includes a digital copy.