Not quite up to his stellar debut with The Matador, Richard Shepard still manages to summon up the darkly cynical realism that informs his comedy. Of course, in this new movie, he's saddled with the extra burden of an overlay of actual historical reality, so it's no wonder The Hunting Party never quite takes flight like The Matador - - after all, only one has the captive quarry.

The acting is good, Terrence Howard once again excelling, and Richard Gere, great as always, though Jesse Eisenberg was the weak link in the chain.

Funny, yet searing view of the slaughter of Muslims in the Bosnian war of the 90's and the ragtag gang of journalists who went digging for the hidden gravedigger...

7 out of 5.

One of those rare movies that gets better as it goes along, The Hunting Party may never be a great film, but it's consistently engaging, features some solid lead actors doing their thing, and is at least ambitious in what it has to say. Even if it's a bit less than the sum of it's parts, it handles it's mixture of genres quite well, and features a lot of fun, colorful scenes courtesy of director Richard Shepard.

While hardly perfect, it deserves a much better fate than what it's received in the U.S. Then again, this sort of damning film would never really be a hit domestically.

I got to see this one last night. It started a bit on the slow side but quickly picked up steam and had a pretty good ending as well. It seemed like it could have played well to a mainstream adult audience but I'm guessing the overabundance of terrorist and or Middles Eastern war movies is hurting the chance of success for a film like this.
4/5