The Hunter

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Cold, low-key and understated, this Iranian drama (the second to reach us after the underrated No One Knows About Persian Cats) can be infuriatingly slow at times but it's also oddly compelling and pulls the viewer into its hypnotic world. Still deathly slow, though.

Writer/director/star Rafi Pitts (following on from his praised debut It's Winter) plays Ali Alavi, the hunter of the title. Ali is an ex-con looking to spend more time with his daughter (Yaghoobi) and wife (Hajir) but is stuck in a dead end night watchman job; his parole officer points out that men like him should be happy with what they have and, no, he can't switch to the day shift. When he isn't trying to be the family man, Ali likes to take his rifle into the forest surrounding the (unnamed) city, something that comes in handy later. When his parole officer tells him that his wife was killed in a street battle between police and rebels, and his daughter is missing, the detached Ali scours the city's orphanages and hospitals for her. When she turns up in a morgue, a distraught Ali takes his rifle and mounts to a rise nearest the motorway and takes aim at an oncoming police car...

The Hunter then veers off into a different kind of film altogether - and it can't be delved into here in case of spoilers - but it divides the movie, which up until then was split into two, into three very different factions. At times it feels the only thing these episodes have in common is the character himself. With disparate episodes and a cold character in focus, The Hunter doesn't have dialogue to keep the viewer entertained; everything is stripped back here and character back-and-forth is the first to lose out. It's all an aim to isolate Ali - the police, the hospital and the orphanage couldn't be more unhelpful if they tried and Ali looks lost and could disappear into his perpetually furrowed brow at any moment. The understated performance and the trimmed back dialogue mirror Pitts' directing style - there are no 'showy' shots, as the director wants to tell the story as simply as possible.

The Hunter is interesting in places but Pitts' film is never far away from boredom. Its surprise ending is a shocker, however, and adds another layer to the deceptively simple story.