The newly-released movie The Grey tracksLiam Neeson’s attempt to survive in the Alaskan wilderness, but the the upcoming thriller The Hunter will follow Willem Dafoe as he is tested by another kind of unforgiving landscape: Australia’s Tasmanian wilderness.
Defoe stars as Martin, a mercenary sent to Tasmania to track down and kill a Tasmanian tiger, but becomes embroiled in the problems of his host family, whose catatonic matriarch (Frances O’Connor) has lost her husband. The Hunter opened in Australia in October last year after debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where it received mixed reviews.
But whether the reviews were good or bad, praise was heaped onto Dafoe’s focused performance and director Daniel Nettheim‘s beautiful lensing of Tasmania. With The Hunter receiving its first trailer, audiences can finally get to see for themselves what the critics were talking about.
Here’s the official synopsis for The Hunter:
The Hunter is the story of Martin, a skilled and ruthless mercenary sent into the Tasmanian wilderness on a hunt for a tiger believed to be extinct. Hired by an anonymous company that wants the tiger’s genetic material, Martin arrives in Tasmania posing as a scientist. He proceeds to set up base camp at a broken-down farmhouse, where he stays with a family whose father has gone missing. Usually a loner, Martin becomes increasingly close to the family; however, as his attachment to the family grows, Martin is led down a path of unforeseen dangers, complicating his deadly mission.
