Hunting Season

I strolled into Hunting Season braced for a bog-standard B-movie to chew through 90 minutes, but blimey, it snuck up and proper hooked me... tight as a snare drum once the gears grind into gear.

Mel Gibson's grizzled survivalist dad isn't reinventing the wheel, mind, but he lends that rumpled charisma to uplift a script that's lean and mean, no faffing about with needless bloat.

The young cast holds their own splendidly, dishing out heartfelt sparks amid the woodland grit, though the chief baddie veers a tad OTT, like a Bond villain gone feral.

That first half simmers deliberately, lulling you before unleashing a blistering 50-minute frenzy of revenge and raw survival - pure escapism that flies by.

A surprising 7/10 for this unpretentious thriller; underrates the charm if you ask me. Fancy a spot of family-fueled firepower? Grab the remote - it's a corker for a cosy night in.

Ignore the anti Gibson invasion here. It's a decent movie, perhaps low on script and depth but the acting is good, and the tension builds well. It's a no nonsense traditional action movie, and none the worse for that.

For me it's a solid 7/10 plus a one point bonus for the way the simplicity took me back to a better time. Well done Mel, out there in the real world you have far more fans than haters!

"Hunting Season" is a competently made thriller that builds tension through atmosphere and restraint, even if it never quite rises above genre familiarity. It's a solid watch, but one that plays things a little too safely to leave a lasting impression.

The direction favors subtlety over spectacle, allowing unease to develop gradually. This approach works in places, creating moments of genuine tension, but it also means the film can feel muted at times, lacking the punch needed to fully engage. Visually, it's appropriate and consistent, though rarely striking.

The performances are believable and grounded, helping sell the realism of the situation. However, the characters themselves aren't especially memorable, and the story follows well-worn paths without adding much of its own identity. What could have been sharper or more daring settles instead for competence.

In the end, "Hunting Season" isn't bad - just limited. It delivers a restrained, watchable thriller experience, but one that remains firmly in the realm of "okay" rather than truly compelling.

Mel Gibson returns with a fatherly role, with healthy principles such as family care and faith, in a lost, corrupt and violent world.

Sofia Hublitz is like a ray of sunshine and is very believable in the role.

Miss Stallone does okay.

Mel has his original "hands" that made him famous.

A film worth seeing.

8.0 stars.

I lost count how many hundreds of movies I've seen similar to 'Hunting Season'. Just about every movie star has been in one and I think Mel Gibson has probably been in a half-dozen like this.

Trying to describe the genre, it's basically a story about a father protecting a woman and his innocent daughter from bad people. There are a hundred ways to tell this particular type of story, whether it's on a grand scale like 'John Wick', or literally any movie with a big shot action hero, such as 'Death Wish' or a very small scale like 'Hunting Season' -- they tell mostly the same story. I know I've seen so many others that are almost identical to it, but none of the names come to mind.

But this film is simply about an aged man (Gibson) who is mostly a hermit living in a cabin in the woods with his daughter. They stumble onto a wounded woman down by the river and the rest of the narrative is easy to figure. It's about all hell breaking loose when gangsters find out the woman is still alive, because she knows too much.

Sound like a familiar plot? It certainly is and that's the rest of the story. As you can guess, the old man is a warrior, ex-military type, and his daughter can handle a gun too. And so now they must defend themselves against a butt-load of two-bit gangsters who basically run a cartel in "Jerkwater USA", as Colonel Trautman would say.

This movie is a semi-slow burner and not in any way a big production, but it will keep you on the edge of your seat. It felt a bit like 'Road House' too, (The Swayze version), but I'm not exactly sure why. I think the daughter resembles the blond in 'Road House', I don't know.