Willem Dafoe plays a mysterious loner hired to find the Tasmanian Tiger, which is considered extinct. The film co-stars two wonderful kids and the Tasmanian back-country, extraordinarily beautiful.
What's great about this movie is that in addition to telling an excellent story, it is beautifully filmed and, as a bonus, sent my wife and me to the Internet to look up Tasmania and the Tasmanian Tiger, which indeed is considered the most recently extinct animal. So we learned something too! As for the story, sure you can carp and say it's too far-fetched, or too sentimental, or has holes in it (what story doesn't). But it hangs together quite well and is not only multi-faceted but refreshingly unpredictable.
And the wonderful Silence. Few actors can work in silence as well as Willem Dafoe. This may be his strongest-ever performance, his expressive face being his best feature. Many scenes are told in silence, or rather with only the sounds of the back-country and the excellent movie score.
Dafoe triumphs in a movie that is, after all, ultimately about his well-drawn character. After all, it is called "The Hunter."
