He went out on this

“The Hunter” would be Steve McQueen’s last movie before his death but mostly it has the air of an actor and a film crew that has already checked out. Well, not exactly everyone. The stunt crew does nice work in certain scenes but those are surrounded by a movie that could really care less. There’s no character here, no focus, no point of view, or reason. Scenes just happen in a haphazard log jam that even the best editor couldn’t fix.


The reason is the film is all subplots. We continue to wait for something intrinsic to happen but instead the character does one thing and then he’s on to the next a moment later. That character is named Papa Thorson, and he’s supposedly modeled after a real life bounty hunter, as the film says, but what’s odd about this is that you never really learn any real thing about him.


As played by McQueen, he’s basically just a guy who gets called upon to chase down bail jumpers and for the most part that’s the most we learn about him. Sure, he’s having a kid with a girlfriend, is a crappy driver, and for some reason there are a bunch of guys always at his house playing poker. But who are they? And for the better question- who is he? His whole life seems reduced to cute tics and busy work- we never really meet him.


The rest is all a hodgepodge. We see Thorson so after one bail jumper (Levar Burton), who eventually winds up living at Thorson’s house for some reason, though the relationship seems to end there. We see Thorson ignoring orders to bring in a Sheriff’s bear of a nephew. We see him go after several more jumpers. We see a police captain who suddenly feels guilt over his corruption. In his downtown, Torson goes to lamaze class with the girlfriend.


Then there is also one of those garden variety sick freak psychos (Tracey Walter) who probably sprouted up like weeds after “Dirty Harry”. He seems to be the main antagonist, threatening to kill Thorson for taking him in. We see various scenes where he terrorizes the girlfriend, who for some odd reason never thinks that telling Thorson about any of this is pertinent information he needs to know.


But even this guy is subdued into the background in the pursuit of more bail jumpers, more of McQueen smirking his way through the film, and granted, some pretty nifty stunts. I liked one where McQueen chases some dynamite-throwing joyriders through a cornfield on a thresher and there’s another chase later where he hangs off the top of a speeding Chicago train.


The movie also moves especially well but that’s probably because it seems edited down to the edge of its life. Nothing, no character or story arc, means a whole hell of a lot and it’s mostly all action with only the flimsiest of reasons to care or even understand what’s happening from scene to scene. It is pretty sad. If he had lived longer- one would think he could have gone on to have the same kind of career, and maybe been the stiffest competition, to Clint Eastwood. Who knows how drastically illness may have altered his final works.

Again, props to the stunt crew. But i'm sure McQueen fans would have wanted him to go out on something a little more substantial than this.