In short: The Hunter (1980)

Ralph “Papa” Thorson is a modern day bounty hunter. While he apparently always gets his man – women don’t seem to get onto his list – and likes to talk about good guys and bad guys, he also has bit of a soft streak, taking in orphans and strays. These strays can come in the form of cops like his buddy Pete (Richard Venture) or robbers like one of his latest bounties, young Tommy Price (LeVar Burton). There’s a permanent party/poker game with these guys in Papa’s living room, and neither he nor his very pregnant long-time girlfriend Dotty (Kathryn Harrold) seem to mind.

It’s not all sunshine in Papa’s world, though, for he is suffering from a bad case of fear of commitment, despite eight years of live-in relationship, the most patient woman imaginable as his girlfriend, and that baby on the way.

As some added relationship spice, a crazy person (Tracey Walter) with a lust for vengeance sneaks around Dotty rather loudly; though apparently nobody tells Papa, for some reason.

Which pretty much sums up the main problem this final film starring Steve McQueen, as directed by Buzz Kulik, suffers from: a script that brings up plotline after plotline that it then never appears to care enough about to develop it. I’m not demanding depth, exactly, but a proper crime/action movie like this does need an actual through line leading its hero from one action scene to the next. Whereas The Hunter sets up potential through lines only to then ignore them, and instead provide the series of action sequences with no connective tissue whatsoever apart from McQueen’s presence, as if this were the highlight reel of a TV show instead of an actual movie.

That’s rather a shame, too, for the film has a couple of decent and two pretty great action sequences, staged with enough verve and imagination to make the film still worth watching, and featuring a couple of pretty hair-raising stunts. If only anyone involved had bothered to connect the set pieces emotionally or even on the most basic plot level. Again, I’m not asking for depth or cleverness, I’m asking for the film to do the basic minimum for a viewer to connect to it.

Not surprisingly, the film has three endings as well, pretending all its underdeveloped plots are resolved satisfactorily this way.