The Hunting Party

A war correspondent falls apart on live television and loses his job. Years later he finds his old cameraman in Sarajevo and makes a proposal: they will find a wanted war criminal and interview him. A young intern joins them as a third. Everyone they meet on the road takes them not for journalists but for an assassination team. The subject is not the war but three amateurs being able to find a man international institutions are not looking for. That is the idea the film rests on, and it is asked outright at the end: if he can be found, why was he not. The form advances by changing genre. The first half has the tone of a buddy comedy; in the second the humour stops entirely and the film moves into an account of war crimes. Some viewers find the transition abrupt. The source is real: the film is based on a magazine article about three journalists who went after a war criminal in Bosnia. The strangest detail in that article is in the film too, the reaction of local forces who took them for a CIA team. Richard Gere plays the correspondent, Terrence Howard the cameraman and Jesse Eisenberg the intern. Richard Shepard directs. Who it is for: viewers interested in journalism narratives and the aftermath of the Balkan war. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a consistent tone; the film cuts hard between comedy and war crime.