Rafi Pitts is the Iranian-born director of the powerful 2006 movie It’s Winter, and has a reputation for being a poet of emotions and for making films that look beautiful. Both are certainly true of his new film The Hunter, which intriguingly eludes generic pigeonholing. Perhaps not entirely deliberately, Pitts has made a movie with an identity crisis. As it continues, the film appears to change from being a static study of character into a more active drama, and then into an out-and-out suspense thriller. In none of these forms is The Hunter entirely successful, to be honest, but it has flavour and character and poise, and the cinematographer Mohammad Davudi creates some superb images.
