And the nominations for the category of “Least Prescient 2020 Film” are …
- Bill & Ted Face the Music, a film in which two time-traveling morons are given 75 minutes to save the world with a song
- The Old Guard, a film in which eternal soldiers use immortality to stage political coups
- Tenet, a film where the key plot involves the hero going backwards in time while everybody else moves forward
- The Invisible Man, a film with an invisible man
- The Hunt, a film that called out liberal elites as spiteful and violent during the very same election cycle that led to conservatives en masse being spiteful and violent.
And the winner is …
The Hunt! Congratulations, in a year of Bill, Ted, and Tenet, you have proven the least likely scenario to come about! Speech! Speech!
Let me start off by saying I liked this movie. No, it didn’t get much right, but I actively rooted for the heroine, Crystal (Betty Gilpin), because, let’s face it –as a liberal, I feel hunting people is barbaric no matter what other values I might share with the hunters, and if the prey is a closet predator, more power to them!
The premise of the film is simple enough – liberal elites have identified several outspoken right wing assholes and decided to drug them, kidnap them, transport them to a remote location, and hunt them for sport. And I’m gonna stop right there – you guys really don’t know liberals very well, do you? Do you really think we live for revenge and murder? That’s our fantasy, is it? The folks that want to “take away your guns” are only too happy to wield them against you? Wow. You don’t know us at all.
You want to know what makes us tick? You know what would make us cream our jeans? Accountability. Much more than death; and it’s not even close. We want to see everybody responsible held accountable for the Trump presidency and the corruption therein. And you know what pisses us off the most? It’s not what you think it is. Liberals aren’t nearly as “triggered” as people on the Right must assume. Heck, we don’t vote out of fear, they do. What pisses us off most is how any perceived misstep by an “agent of the Left” from Clinton’s role in Benghazi to Obama’s tan suit is regarded as gospel treason, but ACTUAL TREASON by figures on the actual Right goes completely overlooked. That’s what gets us. It’s not “cancel culture” or the deliberate attempts to promote global warming or COVID deaths –you fuckers will see where that gets you soon enough—it’s the lethal hypocrisy and genuine corruption unchecked. In other words, it’s not the cries, it’s the crimes.
But I digress. The Hunt struck me much more as politically “neutral” film. It seemed to scorn a number of extremists, but only seemed to love the one character who offered true no political opinions, just common sense. More on that later.
So twelve dazed, drugged, airlifted folks wake up in a glade with a big box of weapons for “fairness?” As soon as they touch anything, however, it’s game on and the folks in the clearing are sitting ducks for the mines, traps, and riflemen hanging out in a bunker. It isn’t long before Crystal stands alone, which makes sense; she’
s the only one who seems to understand the game for what it is … and how to play it.
Congratulations film, you’ve done the one thing neither pol nor pundit has achieved in decades, made me root for the conservative. The Hunt isn’t misnamed; it is exactly that, a hunt – and while the film is a political dud, I think it makes a pretty good thriller. It plays a lot like Ready or Not only if you took the Ready or Not screenplay and sprinkled in political buzzwords. When The Hunt resembled Ready or Not, it was an effective film. When it delved into making political noise, it was not.
It seems clear from the screenplay that The Hunt is disgusted with all politics; it’s a: “I’ve had enough of da both of youse” kind of thing. Is it a given that people who push the NRA are much likelier to hunt their opponents for sport than people who do not (so this is a twist, maybe)? It doesn’t really matter. Accusing both sides of extremism in 2020 is stupid, lazy, and a prime example of white privilege. Only white people could possibly pretend “both sides are at fault” is a legitimate POV. It’s a cop out and a classic false equivalency. First of all, imagine what it takes to be a “Centrist” in modern America. Real centrists are solidly blue these days. That’s a fact. What lies exactly between Trump’s America and Biden’s America? Hmmm, Bush’s America, maybe? Except even Liz Cheney favors accountability for Trump. One way or another, it’s pretty clear that somebody exactly in-between Biden and Trump is already very right of center. So accusing both sides of extremism kinda ignores the fact that the United States is violently right-of-center these days – and that was BEFORE the insurrection coup attempt. The current Republican Party of 2021 doesn’t recognize opposition as legitimate; it would gladly turn fascist and authoritarian if given a chance – so maybe the premise of “those damn extremist liberals are out of control” is a tad off – and you wonder why this film didn’t resonate despite being political in an election year and the ONLY MAJOR FILM playing in theaters after March 13.
Next time, Craig Zobel, writers, maybe stick to the thriller stuff. That part worked.
A political treatise mired in frivolity
For misunderstanding of basic causality
You can hand them every rifle
And make their lives a trifle
But liberals only “hunt” for equality
Rated R, 90 Minutes
Director: Craig Zobel
Writer: Nick Cuse, Damon Lindelof
Genre: What happens when you let angry people write screenplays
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: “Centrists”
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Everybody else
