<p> An evil corporation with an innocuous name, Redleaf, lurks in the shadows of <em>The Hunter</em>, and its reach extends to the remotest corners of the Earth. Willem Dafoe plays the titular stalker, Martin David, a freelance enforcer hired by Redleaf contractors to track an animal generally thought extinct, the Tasmanian tiger, a beast whose DNA the corporation wants to own for cryptic reasons (no doubt involving maximum profits). A fastidious loner who listens to opera, David's exact background and profession is unclear. Perhaps he's part assassin, part investigator, part tracker, and he'll have to draw from all those skills on his mission to find the tiger. </p> <p>Filmed in the beautiful backcountry of Tasmania, covered in forests and ascending into steep mountains, <em>The Hunter</em> (out on Blu-ray and DVD) is drizzled in vague tension. The sullen townsfolk take David for another of those hated tree huggers whose activities they blame for loss of jobs. David falls in with a ramshackle hippie family whose father was lost in the mountains months before. The local guide is shifty (and well played by Sam Neill). And it's uncertain whether some other entity is stalking the tiger or if Redleaf is having David shadowed. Dafoe is good in a buttoned-up performance as a man whose life is as concealed as the bulk of an iceberg. </p>
