oh that's a good one

A really good one, indeed. Mads Mikkelsen gives one of the finest performances I've seen in a long long time.

Wow! I was really impressed with this. One of the best films so far this year and Mads Mikkelsen gives one of the best performances of the year. If any of you have a chance to go see it DO IT! It's probably my #2 of the year right now.

9/10 (A)

The church scene is terrific. Mikkelsen should get an award for that scene alone.

Yeah, that is a great scene.

madsnificent

The Hunt is an atmospheric and interesting drama exploring a disturbing topic: the way a suspicion or an idea of wrongdoing, however indistinct, can become virulent, expanding and clouding as it travels from person to person until the situation spirals out of control and becomes a problem much more vast than the initial argument or concern. The fact it is coupled here with a scenario just as disturbing (a teacher falsely charged with revealing himself to and touching students and the enraged townspeople who encircle and brutalize him) only magnifies the intensity and unease.

Yet as powerful as The Hunt is on the surface, it is also too tidy and heavy-handed. The town's antagonistic reaction to the charged teacher begins as complicated and uncomfortable, as it should be, but their tactics later become macabre and violent to the point of absurdity, and I grew frustrated by the protagonist's refusal to react in a proper way to specific, direct acts of criminality. An innocent man ill at ease in his environment because he knows many are glancing in his direction and wondering if he is indeed an abuser and a deviant is fascinating to consider because the dread and grief is potent, yet hard to place. An innocent man who continues to play the dramatic martyr ("Anyone in the mood for a symbolic Christmas Eve visit to the medieval church?") after his dog is dead, his face bloodied and bruised, etc. is a more frustrating and inauthentic proposition, even if he allows the film to again and again set up anxious sequences which leave the viewer angered and engaged.

There is a spot-on line in a positive, but muted review by critic for the Dissolve: "It's about ambiguity, but there's nothing ambiguous about the film itself." The Hunt does leave an impression. It is wrenching and hypnotic, and the craft deserves credit, as does a committed performance by lead Mads Mikkelsen, yet there is also a deflating sensation as it goes on, as it becomes clearer and clearer the overall enterprise is less interested in a real world (a real justice system, a real town with real dynamics) and more interested in functioning as a type of audience teasing exploitation spectacle disguised as a funereal indictment of the perceived reactionary nature of middle-class society.

B

This is really great, intensity turned to 11. By the second half of the film even I was beginning to wonder if he did it, despite all the evidence against it. A classic among persecution type of films and maybe the best of Denmark's surge lately