Good characters, and a wonderful setting. Ray Winstone looks good as a grizzled Boer, the Maori fugitive conveys his conflicted upbringing very well, and the British Empire characters are convincing enough. However, the relationship between the tracker and the tracked is quite stilted and wooden, unfolding predictably through various twists of fate and escape attempts. The motivation for the tracker in releasing the prisoner towards the end is not quite clear ... it would have been better if he had cynically taken the reward and *then* released the prisoner. This is all mitigated by the great setting and wonderful imagery of the New Zealand wilderness, but the story falls apart at the climactic scene through a fairly basic continuity blunder at the end when Winstone has dry clothes despite jumping into a pool...this also undermines the critical twist. Definitely worth watching if you like outdoors movies, as it deservedly scores highly on scenery, but it could have been a far better film with attention to plot and dialogue.
Review of Tracker
