Directed by: David Raymond
Starring: Henry Cavill, Ben Kingsley, Stanley Tucci, Alexandra Daddario, Brendan Fletcher, Eliana Jones
The generically titled Night Hunter sounds like a B-movie I would bypass at my local video store many moons ago so I could rent something I'd at least heard of. Video stores have been replaced by Video On Demand, and Night Hunter is the same type of movie I should've skipped over to watch another episode of 30 Rock. This is a thoroughly unpleasant movie; as cold and unforgiving as the harsh Minnesota winter it is set in. Fargo it is not.
We learn quickly what we're in for in the opening scenes, when a would-be sexual predator is lured to a hotel room by a seemingly naive teenage girl only to be whacked in the back of the head from behind with a baseball bat. The blow alone should've killed the guy, but he wakes up handcuffed to a bed and finds he has been castrated. The man who clocked the predator with the bat demands payment so he could use the money to pay restitution to the predator's past victims. Night Hunter is off to an uneasy start and it only gets worse.
The man with the bat is a former judge named Cooper and is played by Ben Kingsley, who won on Oscar for playing Mahatma Gandhi and is now playing a vigilante who castrates predators. Acting can be such an unforgiving profession. You take the work where you can get it. It is never fully explained how Lara (Jones) allows herself to be used as bait to catch sickos, but it appears Cooper has a grandfatherly type of relationship with Lara, and he is attempting to make up for past mistakes while serving on the bench.
Lara is soon kidnapped and taken to a basement dungeon where several young girls are held captive in cells. The police, led by Detective Marshall (Cavill), storms the place and arrests Simon (Fletcher), the creepy lunatic who held the girls hostage. While being questioned by profiler Rachel (Daddario), Simon exhibits multiple personalities and drooling derangement while doing everything but banging his own head on the wall. Rachel and Marshall are hostile towards each other and apparently had a Past, which we assume to mean they were once lovers. This is just many aspects of the plot which aren't fully explained.
Marshall instinctively believes Simon is somehow playing them, and is less inclined to be patient than Rachel, causing further Tension. When six police officers are gassed to death while investigating the crime scene, the game is now afoot. How can Simon perpetrate crimes while locked up? Maybe Marshall should watch Law Abiding Citizen, which has similar plot elements. Stanley Tucci is on hand as the police commissioner who is frothing at the mouth to send Simon to the electric chair and even pounds on him once or twice. It appears Simon doesn't have a lawyer, and it's hard to believe one didn't volunteer to take Simon on as a client.
I won't spoil any surprises, except to say the Big Reveal is not totally out of left field, but it is not explained how exactly the deception was pulled off. We end with apparently the only two cops working in all of Minnesota involved in a Mexican standoff with Simon and his accomplice on a frozen lake. If you guess one or more of the people standing on the ice will fall through it, then congratulations, you have seen a movie before!
Fletcher overacts in a way Tom Hardy would find excessive. Cavill, with his shaggy hair and scruffy beard, looks as if he would do just about anything to escape this movie, and doesn't even bother to wear a jacket in the middle of the Minnesota winter. Daddario is in the role of the perky cop, but without the perk. Night Hunter has straight-to-VOD written all over it. It is gloomy, grim, and ultimately forgettable.
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