[yasr_overall_rating]
Lt. Ramsey Hunter’s life changes when 3 cases hit him simultaneously. A rogue Cop Killer, a beautiful Tennessee runaway serial killer and his corrupt Police Captain boss blackmailing him. But only one of the cases leads him to an ending of universal truth.
In between counseling a runaway-turned-prostitute, chasing a cop killer, and robbing drug dealers to help his girlfriend keep her orphanage open (…I know), Lt. Ramsey Hunter (Ron Becks) unwinds by getting drunk and playing the trumpet. Sometimes he plays the trumpet in the desert. The thing is, when they show him playing the trumpet, the soundtrack uses a saxophone. Every. Time. I actually had to text my best friend, a band director, to ask him if you can make a trumpet sound like a saxophone, and now he thinks I’m crazy. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to “Hunter.”
I haven’t found any promotional material calling this movie a comedy. The publicity I found for it is pretty innocuous, actually. It has the same director as “Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance” (Gregory Hatanaka), but “Hunter” shows no signs of the self-awareness that was the calling card of “Samurai Cop 2.” Which is baffling. If Andy Kaufman were alive today (which…maybe?) he would weep upon seeing “Hunter,” because it so transcends anything that he could produce.
“Hunter” follows the exploits of Ramsey Hunter, hero/renegade cop. He has a conflict with two corrupt superiors (one is former Bond actor George Lazenby, dressed like an Army general, and the other is his direct supervisor, Captain Allison Goodwill), he chases two serial killers, and, as I mentioned, he’s ripping off drug dealers to help support his girlfriend’s orphanage. (Is it alright to refer to a small, independently operated orphanage as a mom-and-pop orphanage?) By the way, while he’s trying to get cash for his girlfriend’s mom-and-pop orphanage, he kills two drug dealers, and it seems to be pretty common knowledge. Several people end up trying to blackmail him over it, and he doesn’t take any steps to cover it up. This still puts him a league above the other detectives in the film, who are being targeted by two(!) cop killers. One is a cop turned fugitive trained (of course) by Hunter himself. The other is the teen runaway who turned to prostitution, and then keeps turning until she’s also a serial killer. She actually does the majority of the killing – most or all of the detectives end up paying her for sex, and getting killed. Internal Affairs must have had an embolism.
It’s not a coherently-plotted work, and none of the characters make sense, but there are messages and themes aplenty, albeit not consistent ones. On a few occasions, Hunter sounds like an outspoken feminist, but his character is betrayed by literally every woman in the film. His girlfriend faked a relationship with him because she knew, somehow, it could lead to him robbing drug dealers to support her orphanage. The female police captain? In cahoots with his evil (of course) ex-wife. The teen runaway-turned-prostitute? A teen runaway-turned-prostitute-turned-killer, who apparently killed her backwoods family. Like with Hunter and the drug dealers, no one tries to do anything about her having murdered her family, even though several people seem to know about it. It’s a cop movie that mostly disregards police work.
Hunter is also prone to philosophizing, and occasionally gets political. The Edward Snowden leaks are referenced during a side-plot with the NSA, an agency that only exists here to suddenly give Hunter all of the information he needs to wrap up most of the plots in the film. The showdown with the cop-turned-killer touches on issues of race and police corruption, but the message feels like an afterthought, and honestly makes less sense than Ben Carson. Several speaking parts went to people who can barely speak English. There are multiple twist endings, and they’re so insipid that they’re sublime.
I think I loved “Hunter.” I’m still trying to process it. I don’t tend to go for ironic enjoyment, but this just pulverized me – I laughed the way you laugh when you haven’t slept in several days, and the world starts to unravel. I need people to see this movie, if only to have confirmation that what I watched actually exists.
Available now at Walmart, Amazon, VOD, iTunes, Amazon, Google, Xbox, and Sony PSP
