Groundbreaking action movies are harder to find than The Ark of the Covenant, which is why the genre is more about perfecting the craft. Case in point, Hunter’s Heart (now on Netflix), a South African programmer who shows little interest in deviating from the tropes of the “retired assassin is strongly forced to return to the game” subgenre, which so often have so much to do with special OPS or black OPS, always with OPS, OPS, OPS, so it better give us some brilliant fights, chases and shootouts, right? And that’s a matter of style and execution, which director Mandla Dube displays often enough to keep us watching.
HUNTER’S HEART: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Zuko Khumalo (Bonko Khoza) thinks he’s out. But will they make him come back? Probably! Especially now that he’s left behind his life as a black ops assassin who kills people with a huge spear and settled down to a nice, boring domestic life with Malime (Masasa Mbangeni) and her son Pakamile (Boleng Mogotsi). . He makes a living repairing motorcycles. He bought an engagement ring. He gets along wonderfully with the child. Nothing will force you to return to his old life. Nothing! You might as well stop watching the movie right now, because it’ll be about little more than getting up, eating breakfast, playing with the kid, and turning a key. HAPPINESS QUEENS.
But. Things are happening in the shadows. The sleazy and corrupt presidential candidate Mtima (Sisanda Henna) has something for taking care of dissidents. He has fingered Johnny Klein (Peter Butler), an old ally of Zuko, as a terrorist. And he has the head of the Presidential Intelligence Agency, Molebogeng (Connie Ferguson), in his pocket. Johnny Klein knocks on Zuko’s door one morning and sets the return process in motion, but it’s not easy: Zuko is tormented when he unknowingly took a boy’s life. in front of the boy’s son. We all know guys like Zuko, because we’ve all seen a lot of action movies about assassins who get out of the killing business and end up back in the killing business, because the killing business isn’t that easy. get out but it’s very easy to get back in, especially if you have things you love in your life that become easy targets for villains. You know, like a dog or a fiancé with an adorable child.
Anyway, back to this Johnny Klein guy. Mtima is a full-blown threat to democracy, and there are other political considerations to consider if you’re willing to consider them, but why would you be willing to? You’re waiting for Zuko to get back to doing what he does best, and that’s not being a family man (although we should give him credit for being pretty good at it). So, of course, Zuko resists, but there comes a point when he has no choice but to resist no longer. Meanwhile, there are some other plots developing, characters Rounding out this story are PIA agent Naledi (Nicole Fortuin), who does right instead of wrong as Molebogeng, and grizzled journalist Bressler (Deon Coetzee), who is trying to take down Mtima with the Fourth Estate. from any state where one uses a terrifyingly huge spear to knock people down, like Zuko does.
What movies will it remind you of?: Does every new action movie deserve to be compared to John Wick? Yes, more or less.
Performance worth seeing: The multi-dimensional characters in this film are, well, what’s the opposite of a dime a dozen? But Khoza is reasonably convincing as a man pulled in two directions by his internal conflict, and good enough to keep us invested.
Memorable dialogue: Bressler gets all the good lines: “Please don’t call me ‘sir.’ I’m a scoundrel and a drunk.”
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: Do not judge Hunter’s Heart for being predictable. Judge it by its solid technical prowess: careful execution of hand-to-hand combat sequences, occasional stylistic indulgence, deft editing, and a pretty good eye for filling the frame. The movie has the feel of a low-budget, digitally shot direct-to-VOD actioner of the kind that inexplicably shows up in Netflix’s top 10 from time to time (some of you really enjoy the movie). Sniper franchise!), but with a more stimulating visual sense, which tells us that Dube is not necessarily collecting a salary, but may have something to prove as a director.
And that modest but remarkable vigor continues Hunter’s Heart afloat. There are moments when the movie feels complicated on its own (there’s a point where I wanted to scream PLEASE STOP INTRODUCING NEW CHARACTERS INTO THE PLOT), when the melodrama feels a little overdone, when yes, we work our way through via a scene where a truck full of highly explosive gas tanks conveniently rolls into the frame so it can explode really well and Zuko’s motorcycle can look cool as it speeds through the flames. But Dube is smart enough to realize that practical effects make movies like this much more believable, so he moves away from CGI, crashing real cars and emphasizing the tangible bumps and crunches of brutally hitting bumps. to the body. It’s a pretty simple formula that CG-heavy movies seem to miss: when the violence looks realistic, the stakes increase, and the movie is all the better for it.
Our call: Hunter’s Heart will not eclipse the Wicksand Bournes of the world, but for a modestly attractive
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
