The story here is kicked off by reports of illegal slaughter of reindeer. Local police turn a blind eye to the culprits, so a Stockholm detective, who was originally from the area, returns home and investigates. Things get complicated when he discovers his younger brother is involved but worse than that, the poaching has escalated into murder.
I had seen the sequel to this Swedish thriller recently, a film called False Trail which was made fifteen years after the first part. I am guessing that The Hunters is a fairly influential film, as it comes very early in the cycle of Nordic Noir movies which have become very popular over the course of the last decade or so. Like others in this bracket, this one derives a fair bit of its interest from its local flavour, in this case the chilly expanses of Lapland. Like False Trail, this one also presents a mystery which is resolved for the audience quite early on, leaving the tension to come from knowing who is dangerous and wondering how the central detective will resolve the case. For me personally, I would have preferred a mystery over the combination of thriller with family drama which both films essentially boil down to a large degree, with the detective character put in a compromised position where he has to weigh up his family loyalty over his wider role to society as a policeman, with the added complication of small town suspicion of city people ever present. I think both films are broadly similar in terms of quality, with neither being especially excellent. I thought they were more an example of a solid, if unremarkable, detective stories combined with family drama with a northern Swedish backdrop. Nothing wrong with any of that of course but I would say these are good films as opposed to the best Nordic Noir has to offer.
