76
Metascore
11 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90The New York TimesStephen HoldenThe New York TimesStephen HoldenThe clammy chill that pervades The Hunter, the fourth feature film by the Iranian director Rafi Pitts, seeps under your skin as you wait for its grim, taciturn protagonist to detonate.
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThis is a parable about modern Iran, and like many recent Iranian films it leaves its meaning to the viewer. One of the wise decisions by Rafi Pitts, its writer, director and star, is to include no dialogue that ever actually states the politics of its hero.
- 83The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThough The Hunter maintains the same even tone after it turns into a chase thriller, the look begins to resemble the work of William Friedkin and Walter Hill in its clean, elemental approach to action.
- 80Time OutDavid FearTime OutDavid FearBy the time you realize how stealthy the film's critique has been, you've already fallen right into its trap.
- 80Village VoiceMelissa AndersonVillage VoiceMelissa AndersonFilmed during the months leading up to the 2009 presidential election in Iran, The Hunter still seethes with fury - and anticipates the blood that would spill after the vote.
- 80SalonAndrew O'HehirSalonAndrew O'HehirA lean, disturbing and beautifully photographed thriller from writer, director and actor Rafi Pitts, who was born in Tehran, educated in Britain and did his filmmaking apprenticeship in France, working for Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax.
- 75Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenIn The Hunter, writer-director Rafi Pitts manages an atmosphere of choked, ambiguous dread, somehow naturalistic and hallucinatory at once, that recalls nothing less than Godard's Alphaville.
- 63New York PostV.A. MusettoNew York PostV.A. MusettoCinematographer Mohammad Davudi's nighttime shots of jammed Tehran highways help convey the society's dehumanization. Scenes of a vast forest outside the city, where Ali releases tension by hunting, are powerful in their own, sparse way.
- 60New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNew York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierHis story, like the current release "A Separation," shows a glimpse inside Iran of everyday reversals of fortune, and how easy it is to get caught in the crosshairs of bureaucracy, bad judgment and bad luck.
- 50The New YorkerAnthony LaneThe New YorkerAnthony LaneThe whole film, in fact, which Pitts wrote and directed, lurks on the borders of the unspecified. That is the source of its cool, but also of its sullen capacity to annoy.