'The Hunter's Prayer' Movie Review

'The Hunter's Prayer'
U/A; Thriller/Drama
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Cast: Sam Worthington, Odeya Rush, Martin Compston, Verónica Echegui, Allen Leech, Amy Landecker, Katia Bokor, Dean Jagger
Rating:

Sam Worthington may have advantaged on Avatar's super success but his Hollywood career appears to have hit the breaks what with the sequel to Avatar yet to come and other significant movie roles more-or-less drying up. His presence as Stephen Lucas in 'The Hunter's Prayer' reads desperation. This film is a low-brow, B grader about an assassin who suddenly finds his conscience in the midst of a job, Ella( Odeya Rush), he was hired to execute. Needless to say, the man, Super criminal Richard Addison (Allen Leech) who hired him sends out yet another team of assassins on his trail.

There's nothing distinctive or elevating about this routinely imperiled thriller that performs it's escape acts in lethargic, unbecoming disarray. The 'hitman with a heart' scenario is a done to death one in Hollywood, so the storyline doesn't quite get you involved and the performances are not effective enough to generate any feeling thereby. The violence is well orchestrated but even that comes across as cheesy because the logical flow is not quite right. A high profile party becomes the scene of a ultra-violent shoot-out, there's plenty of gunfire in public spaces, car chases and destruction of public property but the cops don't appear to be bothered much. It's as though the gangs have come out on the streets and have been given a free pass to kill at will. There's also quite a lot of time for the young teen girl and her assassin/protector to move across borders, take the required breaks and in turn fool the cops on their trail without so much as a guise change. With Surrogates and Terminator 3 under his belt, director Jonathan Mostow was expected to put on a good solid showing with this real world Euro-thriller effort - but it's not happening. The generic revisits, the implausibilities in the narrative, the sappily constricted scripting and the unremarkable performances puts paid to any such hope!