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The Hunt (2020)
Lookback/Review by Markdc
As an avid reader, I’ve always preferred novels to short stories. However, several short stories are among my favorite works of literature. For example, I love Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” as well as the irony-laden stories of O. Henry, especially the touching “The Gift of the Magi” and the hilarious “The Ransom of Red Chief.” But the best short story I have ever read is Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game.” Many of the people reading this retrospective review, especially the Americans, are going to be familiar with this story, which first appeared in Collier’s Weekly just over a century ago, and were likely introduced to it in school. (I myself first read “The Most Dangerous Game” in ninth grade English class.) However, in case you’ve never read or heard about this literary masterpiece, here's the plot:
While traveling on a ship in the Caribbean, Sanger Rainsford, a big game hunter, accidentally goes overboard and soon finds himself on an island owned by a Russian Cossack named General Zaroff, whose only companion is Ivan, a deaf and mute Cossack who serves him. Zaroff gives Rainsford a sumptuous dinner at his chateau and tells him that he is also a big game hunter. The former Russian officer then says he uses lights to entice ships to the island, which he calls Ship-Trap, so they can strike the jagged rocks that surround it and founder. Zaroff then captures the surviving sailors and hunts them for sport. He does this, Zaroff informs Rainsford, because hunting animals had become too easy and boring for him, whereas humans make far more interesting prey due to their ability to reason. Zaroff gives Rainsford food, clothing, a knife, and a head start before he, Ivan, and his dogs begin hunting him. But Rainsford uses his own experience and knowledge as a hunter to elude capture and build several traps that end up killing Ivan and one of Zaroff’s dogs. He then jumps into the sea to fake a suicide and avoid the surviving canines and eventually makes his way into Zaroff’s chateau. When Zaroff discovers him in his bedroom, the two men fight to the death, and Rainsford wins.
Given “The Most Dangerous Game’s” status as “the most popular short story ever written in English,” it should come as no surprise that this literary classic has been adapted many times for film, television, and radio—beginning with the 1932 movie The Most Dangerous Game, which Ernest B. Schoedsack directed for RKO Pictures. The story has also served as an influence for various other books and movies, including The Hunger Games series. I’ve seen five different film adaptations of “The Most Dangerous Game,” and my favorite one is The Hunt, which was directed by Craig Zobel, who updated Connell’s original story and turned it into a political satire for the Trump era.
At the beginning of the movie, a group of rich Liberal Elites have a conversation via text message and engage in one of their favorite pastimes—bashing supporters of President Donald Trump, whom they contemptuously refer to as the “Ratf***er-in-Chief.” (Although Trump’s name is never mentioned directly in the film, his supporters are called “Deplorables,” the name that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election, infamously gave them.) At one point, one of the Elites, a corporate executive named Athena Stone, sends a text in which she discusses the idea of hunting Deplorables for sport. The message, which is intended as a joke, somehow gets leaked and is splashed all over the internet, and Conservative podcasters and bloggers use it to create and spread a Rightwing conspiracy theory called “Manorgate.” As a result, Athena and the other Elites who participated in the text conversation are canned from their jobs, and their careers and reputations are ruined. Furious and itching for revenge, the Elites decide to do “the hunt” for real.
Under Athena’s leadership, they spend a year training and preparing, and when everything is ready, the Elites abduct 12 of the Deplorables responsible for Manorgate and fly them to a secluded area in Croatia. When they wake up, the Deplorables are given weapons but are picked off by their hunters with considerable ease. However, the Elites made a mistake when they tracked down their intended targets. One of the people kidnapped is a woman from Mississippi named Crystal May Creasey, whom the Elites mistook for a fiery Conservative blogger named Crystal Mae Creasey, who’s also from the Magnolia State and is best known by her online nom de plume “Justice4Yall.” This proves a fatal error because the other Crystal is tough, intelligent, cunning, and an Afghan War veteran to boot. Once she gets her hands on some firearms, Crystal turns the tables on the hunters and kills them one at a time until only Athena is left. When Crystal reaches Athena’s opulent house, the two of them engage in mortal combat and Crystal prevails, proving once again that man—or, in this case, woman—is the most dangerous animal of all.
Universal Pictures, the studio behind The Hunt, had planned to release the film on September 27, 2019. However, the execs decided to cancel the release date in the wake of two horrific mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. This decision was also influenced by a torrent of criticism from Conservative commentators and President Trump, who took to Twitter to write: “Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level, and with great Anger and Hate! They like to call themselves ‘Elite,’ but they are not Elite. In fact, it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the Elite. The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others. They are the true Racists, and are very bad for our Country!” The Hunt was finally released on Friday, March 13, 2020, but this proved unfortunate timing because the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters all over the United States to shutter operations just a week later. Although Universal released the movie on digital formats, it ended up bombing financially, grossing just $12.4 million on a modest $14 million budget. Unsurprisingly, The Hunt wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, but it did snag a nomination for a Chainsaw Award—a fitting nod, given the movie’s pervasive, gory violence. Professional critics greeted The Hunt with a lukewarm reception. David Ehrlich of IndieWire spoke for many when he wrote of the film: “Combining the droll self-satisfaction of a New Yorker cartoon with the wet gore of an Eli Roth movie, Zobel’s tense, well-crafted, and deviant grindhouse take on the national temperature has no trouble caricaturing what ails us, but even that fun combo lacks the killer instinct required to see us more clearly than we see each other.” Similarly, Monica Castillo wrote on RogerEbert.com that The Hunt was “more of a molehill than a mountain.”
Considering that it’s nothing more than a cheap action thriller, The Hunt is a fun ride, though I warn any prospective viewer that the killings presented in this movie are incredibly gruesome. One thing that makes this film unique is that it slams both the Left and Right in equal measure. (Hollywood, which has long been dominated by people with Leftist political views, tends to portray Leftwingers in a positive light and Rightwingers in a negative one.) On the one hand, the Trump-loving Conservatives—or the Deplorables, if you will—are portrayed as ignorant, paranoid bigots. For example, there’s a scene where Crystal and a Deplorable named Gary hop onto a boxcar of a moving train and find a group of refugees, including a crying infant, whom Gary dismisses as “crisis actors.” In another scene, a Deplorable named Don refers to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the journalists who broke the Watergate story, as “Jewboys.” (Trivia note: Only Bernstein was Jewish.) On the other hand, the Liberal Elites who abduct and hunt the Deplorables are portrayed as entitled, smug, arrogant, insanely politically correct, and intolerant of people who don’t share their beliefs while viewing themselves as tolerant. For example, when Athena’s soon-to-be ex-boss chides her for calling Conservative Trump supporters “Deplorable” and says the word is too “charged,” she shoots back, “What would you prefer I call them, Paul? ‘F***ing rednecks’? ‘Gun-clutching homophobes’? ‘Academically challenged racists’? What about ‘tooth-deprived bigots’?” With one exception, all the Elites are White. But these White Liberals are ashamed of their racial “privilege.” For instance, one of them says, “White people, we’re the f***in’ worst,” and during one scene when the Elites are choosing their victims from a list of candidates, they reject a Black Trump supporter and decide to abduct only White Conservatives because, as a woman named Miranda puts it, “We need to lean into the stereotype.” However, these Elites don’t seem to mind their economic privilege and make full use of their money, private jets, and fancy homes.
In a fun, silly B-movie like The Hunt, none of the actors can be expected to turn in an Oscar-caliber performance, but two members of the cast really stand out here. My favorite performance is by Betty Gilpin as Crystal May Creasey. I’ve never seen Gilpin in anything else, but she is best known for her role as Debbie “Liberty Belle” Eagan in the Netflix television comedy show GLOW. Gilpin was the only actor in The Hunt to receive any real praise from critics, and from what I understand, her character in that movie is vastly different from the one she plays in GLOW. As was mentioned in the plot summary above, Crystal isn’t the Deplorable that the Elites thought she was, but since she’s a White working-class woman from Mississippi and a military veteran, some viewers might be inclined to ASSume that she’s a Conservative Trump supporter anyway—but, of course, such an ASSumption could only emanate from rank prejudice. I think it’s wise for Zobel not to reveal what Crystal’s political beliefs are—or if she has any to speak of. Crystal is a smart woman who—contrary to the stereotype that the Elites have of people like her—is familiar with the music of Beethoven and has read (and understood) George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Also, Crystal is a skilled fighter, whether with a gun or with her bare hands; in short, she’s a total badass. The other notable performance in The Hunt is by Hilary Swank as the swanky Athena Jones. Athena, like Crystal, is highly intelligent and skilled in shooting and martial arts and makes a great foil for our heroine. Given the fact that Swank has won acting Oscars for her work in award-winning films such as Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby and is also a Liberal Democrat who supported the Biden-Harris ticket in the 2020 presidential election, I’m surprised she played a character like Athena Jones in a movie like The Hunt. Obviously, her performance here isn’t going to go down as one of her finest, but kudos to her for being willing to poke some fun at Liberal Elites like herself. I love the scene at the end where Athena and Crystal engage in hand-to-hand combat while a Beethoven piece plays on the soundtrack. Classical music usually doesn’t accompany fight scenes in movies, which is a crying shame because they can go so well together, as is demonstrated in The Hunt.
The only real criticism that I have of The Hunt is the way it ends. After Crystal defeats and kills Athena, she cauterizes a serious wound that the latter gave her with a blowtorch, puts on one of Athena’s lavish gowns, and boards her private jet. As the aircraft takes off, Crystal eats some of the Elites’ caviar and shares it with the stewardess, who has never enjoyed the luxury of such expensive food. I think it would have been far more interesting if, instead of flying back to Mississippi, Crystal had taken possession of Athena’s house, clothes, money, and jet and become the very Elite that she just fought against. In my view, such a conclusion would have provided some real insight into human nature. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to be content with the ending Zobel gave us.
However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note here that The Hunt does contain one insightful scene. About halfway into the film, Crystal tells the Deplorable Don a story that her mother used to tell her when she was a little girl. This story is called “The Jackrabbit and the Box Turtle,” a version of “The Tortoise and the Hare”—but with a twist. Everyone who has read or heard “The Tortoise and the Hare” knows the moral of that Aesop fable: Slow and steady wins the race. In Crystal’s version, the jackrabbit is the fastest animal in the forest, and—suffice to say—he ain’t exactly humble about that fact. He’s always boasting that he can beat any other animal in a contest of speed. Finally, the box turtle has had enough of this, so he challenges the jackrabbit to a footrace. The jackrabbit gladly accepts because he already knows what the outcome will be, because the jackrabbit always wins. When the contest begins, the jackrabbit leaves his slow-moving opponent in the dust—just as everyone anticipates. But, not content to win such a quick and easy victory, he decides to make the race closer than anyone expected. He’ll still win, of course, because the jackrabbit always wins, but he wants to make things a bit more interesting. So the jackrabbit lies down and takes a nap. When he wakes up, he hears the crowd of animals cheering and realizes that he slept much longer than he intended. The jackrabbit flies toward the finish line but arrives one second after the box turtle lumbers across it. The rest of the animals go wild, and the jackrabbit feels angry and humiliated as he watches the unlikely victor bask in the cheers and applause. Later that night, the box turtle is eating supper with his family and excitedly telling them how he won his great victory when the jackrabbit suddenly bursts through the door with a hammer in his hand. The box turtle watches in shock and horror as the jackrabbit kills his wife and children with the hammer before he himself is dispatched. Then the jackrabbit calmly sits down at the table and helps himself to his victims’ supper. Moral of the story: The jackrabbit ALWAYS wins. And that, in my opinion, is a perfect metaphor for politics.
Lookback/Review by Markdc
As an avid reader, I’ve always preferred novels to short stories. However, several short stories are among my favorite works of literature. For example, I love Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” as well as the irony-laden stories of O. Henry, especially the touching “The Gift of the Magi” and the hilarious “The Ransom of Red Chief.” But the best short story I have ever read is Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game.” Many of the people reading this retrospective review, especially the Americans, are going to be familiar with this story, which first appeared in Collier’s Weekly just over a century ago, and were likely introduced to it in school. (I myself first read “The Most Dangerous Game” in ninth grade English class.) However, in case you’ve never read or heard about this literary masterpiece, here's the plot:
While traveling on a ship in the Caribbean, Sanger Rainsford, a big game hunter, accidentally goes overboard and soon finds himself on an island owned by a Russian Cossack named General Zaroff, whose only companion is Ivan, a deaf and mute Cossack who serves him. Zaroff gives Rainsford a sumptuous dinner at his chateau and tells him that he is also a big game hunter. The former Russian officer then says he uses lights to entice ships to the island, which he calls Ship-Trap, so they can strike the jagged rocks that surround it and founder. Zaroff then captures the surviving sailors and hunts them for sport. He does this, Zaroff informs Rainsford, because hunting animals had become too easy and boring for him, whereas humans make far more interesting prey due to their ability to reason. Zaroff gives Rainsford food, clothing, a knife, and a head start before he, Ivan, and his dogs begin hunting him. But Rainsford uses his own experience and knowledge as a hunter to elude capture and build several traps that end up killing Ivan and one of Zaroff’s dogs. He then jumps into the sea to fake a suicide and avoid the surviving canines and eventually makes his way into Zaroff’s chateau. When Zaroff discovers him in his bedroom, the two men fight to the death, and Rainsford wins.
Given “The Most Dangerous Game’s” status as “the most popular short story ever written in English,” it should come as no surprise that this literary classic has been adapted many times for film, television, and radio—beginning with the 1932 movie The Most Dangerous Game, which Ernest B. Schoedsack directed for RKO Pictures. The story has also served as an influence for various other books and movies, including The Hunger Games series. I’ve seen five different film adaptations of “The Most Dangerous Game,” and my favorite one is The Hunt, which was directed by Craig Zobel, who updated Connell’s original story and turned it into a political satire for the Trump era.
At the beginning of the movie, a group of rich Liberal Elites have a conversation via text message and engage in one of their favorite pastimes—bashing supporters of President Donald Trump, whom they contemptuously refer to as the “Ratf***er-in-Chief.” (Although Trump’s name is never mentioned directly in the film, his supporters are called “Deplorables,” the name that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election, infamously gave them.) At one point, one of the Elites, a corporate executive named Athena Stone, sends a text in which she discusses the idea of hunting Deplorables for sport. The message, which is intended as a joke, somehow gets leaked and is splashed all over the internet, and Conservative podcasters and bloggers use it to create and spread a Rightwing conspiracy theory called “Manorgate.” As a result, Athena and the other Elites who participated in the text conversation are canned from their jobs, and their careers and reputations are ruined. Furious and itching for revenge, the Elites decide to do “the hunt” for real.
Under Athena’s leadership, they spend a year training and preparing, and when everything is ready, the Elites abduct 12 of the Deplorables responsible for Manorgate and fly them to a secluded area in Croatia. When they wake up, the Deplorables are given weapons but are picked off by their hunters with considerable ease. However, the Elites made a mistake when they tracked down their intended targets. One of the people kidnapped is a woman from Mississippi named Crystal May Creasey, whom the Elites mistook for a fiery Conservative blogger named Crystal Mae Creasey, who’s also from the Magnolia State and is best known by her online nom de plume “Justice4Yall.” This proves a fatal error because the other Crystal is tough, intelligent, cunning, and an Afghan War veteran to boot. Once she gets her hands on some firearms, Crystal turns the tables on the hunters and kills them one at a time until only Athena is left. When Crystal reaches Athena’s opulent house, the two of them engage in mortal combat and Crystal prevails, proving once again that man—or, in this case, woman—is the most dangerous animal of all.
Universal Pictures, the studio behind The Hunt, had planned to release the film on September 27, 2019. However, the execs decided to cancel the release date in the wake of two horrific mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. This decision was also influenced by a torrent of criticism from Conservative commentators and President Trump, who took to Twitter to write: “Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level, and with great Anger and Hate! They like to call themselves ‘Elite,’ but they are not Elite. In fact, it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the Elite. The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others. They are the true Racists, and are very bad for our Country!” The Hunt was finally released on Friday, March 13, 2020, but this proved unfortunate timing because the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters all over the United States to shutter operations just a week later. Although Universal released the movie on digital formats, it ended up bombing financially, grossing just $12.4 million on a modest $14 million budget. Unsurprisingly, The Hunt wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, but it did snag a nomination for a Chainsaw Award—a fitting nod, given the movie’s pervasive, gory violence. Professional critics greeted The Hunt with a lukewarm reception. David Ehrlich of IndieWire spoke for many when he wrote of the film: “Combining the droll self-satisfaction of a New Yorker cartoon with the wet gore of an Eli Roth movie, Zobel’s tense, well-crafted, and deviant grindhouse take on the national temperature has no trouble caricaturing what ails us, but even that fun combo lacks the killer instinct required to see us more clearly than we see each other.” Similarly, Monica Castillo wrote on RogerEbert.com that The Hunt was “more of a molehill than a mountain.”
Considering that it’s nothing more than a cheap action thriller, The Hunt is a fun ride, though I warn any prospective viewer that the killings presented in this movie are incredibly gruesome. One thing that makes this film unique is that it slams both the Left and Right in equal measure. (Hollywood, which has long been dominated by people with Leftist political views, tends to portray Leftwingers in a positive light and Rightwingers in a negative one.) On the one hand, the Trump-loving Conservatives—or the Deplorables, if you will—are portrayed as ignorant, paranoid bigots. For example, there’s a scene where Crystal and a Deplorable named Gary hop onto a boxcar of a moving train and find a group of refugees, including a crying infant, whom Gary dismisses as “crisis actors.” In another scene, a Deplorable named Don refers to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the journalists who broke the Watergate story, as “Jewboys.” (Trivia note: Only Bernstein was Jewish.) On the other hand, the Liberal Elites who abduct and hunt the Deplorables are portrayed as entitled, smug, arrogant, insanely politically correct, and intolerant of people who don’t share their beliefs while viewing themselves as tolerant. For example, when Athena’s soon-to-be ex-boss chides her for calling Conservative Trump supporters “Deplorable” and says the word is too “charged,” she shoots back, “What would you prefer I call them, Paul? ‘F***ing rednecks’? ‘Gun-clutching homophobes’? ‘Academically challenged racists’? What about ‘tooth-deprived bigots’?” With one exception, all the Elites are White. But these White Liberals are ashamed of their racial “privilege.” For instance, one of them says, “White people, we’re the f***in’ worst,” and during one scene when the Elites are choosing their victims from a list of candidates, they reject a Black Trump supporter and decide to abduct only White Conservatives because, as a woman named Miranda puts it, “We need to lean into the stereotype.” However, these Elites don’t seem to mind their economic privilege and make full use of their money, private jets, and fancy homes.
In a fun, silly B-movie like The Hunt, none of the actors can be expected to turn in an Oscar-caliber performance, but two members of the cast really stand out here. My favorite performance is by Betty Gilpin as Crystal May Creasey. I’ve never seen Gilpin in anything else, but she is best known for her role as Debbie “Liberty Belle” Eagan in the Netflix television comedy show GLOW. Gilpin was the only actor in The Hunt to receive any real praise from critics, and from what I understand, her character in that movie is vastly different from the one she plays in GLOW. As was mentioned in the plot summary above, Crystal isn’t the Deplorable that the Elites thought she was, but since she’s a White working-class woman from Mississippi and a military veteran, some viewers might be inclined to ASSume that she’s a Conservative Trump supporter anyway—but, of course, such an ASSumption could only emanate from rank prejudice. I think it’s wise for Zobel not to reveal what Crystal’s political beliefs are—or if she has any to speak of. Crystal is a smart woman who—contrary to the stereotype that the Elites have of people like her—is familiar with the music of Beethoven and has read (and understood) George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Also, Crystal is a skilled fighter, whether with a gun or with her bare hands; in short, she’s a total badass. The other notable performance in The Hunt is by Hilary Swank as the swanky Athena Jones. Athena, like Crystal, is highly intelligent and skilled in shooting and martial arts and makes a great foil for our heroine. Given the fact that Swank has won acting Oscars for her work in award-winning films such as Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby and is also a Liberal Democrat who supported the Biden-Harris ticket in the 2020 presidential election, I’m surprised she played a character like Athena Jones in a movie like The Hunt. Obviously, her performance here isn’t going to go down as one of her finest, but kudos to her for being willing to poke some fun at Liberal Elites like herself. I love the scene at the end where Athena and Crystal engage in hand-to-hand combat while a Beethoven piece plays on the soundtrack. Classical music usually doesn’t accompany fight scenes in movies, which is a crying shame because they can go so well together, as is demonstrated in The Hunt.
The only real criticism that I have of The Hunt is the way it ends. After Crystal defeats and kills Athena, she cauterizes a serious wound that the latter gave her with a blowtorch, puts on one of Athena’s lavish gowns, and boards her private jet. As the aircraft takes off, Crystal eats some of the Elites’ caviar and shares it with the stewardess, who has never enjoyed the luxury of such expensive food. I think it would have been far more interesting if, instead of flying back to Mississippi, Crystal had taken possession of Athena’s house, clothes, money, and jet and become the very Elite that she just fought against. In my view, such a conclusion would have provided some real insight into human nature. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to be content with the ending Zobel gave us.
However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note here that The Hunt does contain one insightful scene. About halfway into the film, Crystal tells the Deplorable Don a story that her mother used to tell her when she was a little girl. This story is called “The Jackrabbit and the Box Turtle,” a version of “The Tortoise and the Hare”—but with a twist. Everyone who has read or heard “The Tortoise and the Hare” knows the moral of that Aesop fable: Slow and steady wins the race. In Crystal’s version, the jackrabbit is the fastest animal in the forest, and—suffice to say—he ain’t exactly humble about that fact. He’s always boasting that he can beat any other animal in a contest of speed. Finally, the box turtle has had enough of this, so he challenges the jackrabbit to a footrace. The jackrabbit gladly accepts because he already knows what the outcome will be, because the jackrabbit always wins. When the contest begins, the jackrabbit leaves his slow-moving opponent in the dust—just as everyone anticipates. But, not content to win such a quick and easy victory, he decides to make the race closer than anyone expected. He’ll still win, of course, because the jackrabbit always wins, but he wants to make things a bit more interesting. So the jackrabbit lies down and takes a nap. When he wakes up, he hears the crowd of animals cheering and realizes that he slept much longer than he intended. The jackrabbit flies toward the finish line but arrives one second after the box turtle lumbers across it. The rest of the animals go wild, and the jackrabbit feels angry and humiliated as he watches the unlikely victor bask in the cheers and applause. Later that night, the box turtle is eating supper with his family and excitedly telling them how he won his great victory when the jackrabbit suddenly bursts through the door with a hammer in his hand. The box turtle watches in shock and horror as the jackrabbit kills his wife and children with the hammer before he himself is dispatched. Then the jackrabbit calmly sits down at the table and helps himself to his victims’ supper. Moral of the story: The jackrabbit ALWAYS wins. And that, in my opinion, is a perfect metaphor for politics.