Disappointing
Summary
Hunting Season is more slowburn than I expected and delivers the action in the last 15-20 minutes, but I did find the pacing uneven despite a few inventive kills. I wouldn’t be in a rush to watch it again, but it certainly had its moments and watching Mel Gibson take out the trash is always entertaining.
Plot: When a reclusive survivalist and his daughter rescue a mysterious, wounded woman from a river, they become entangled in a deadly web of violence and revenge, forcing them to confront a brutal criminal to survive.
Review: The trailer made Hunting Season look like it was going to be Mel Gibson back to his badass best, killing bad guys with lawnmowers and other inventive ways to dispatch his enemies.
At an hour and 40 minutes there is sadly about 15-20 minutes of action in the entire picture. Most of the film is Mel being gruff and paranoid as he looks after his daughter Tag while they live in the woods.
One day while out fishing she finds a girl who has been left for dead; Tag tells her dad and then… nothing much really happens. They bring her home and she very slowly recovers, Mel smokes a lot and we occasionally cut to the villain, Alejandro (an overacting Jordi Mollà) as he gets mad about not being able to find the girl.
For some reason this film never really grabbed me; the final 15-20 minutes has some decent action as Mel goes on the rampage where we get a shoot-out and an explosion. The rest of the movie is mostly about building up the tension, but there’s no point when the payoff isn’t really worth it. The pacing is uneven and I found it really dragged in places; you could have trimmed a few minutes off just to keep things tighter.
Scarlett Stallone shows up briefly as a waitress (similar to her role in Tulsa King); the opening scene with her and Alejandro is one of the highlights and is the tensest scene in the film.
Overall, Hunting Season wasn’t as action packed as I was hoping it would be and dragged in places; Mel Gibson is well cast as the tough woodsman who will protect the innocent from harm. There is some decent action in the last 15-20 minutes and a few mean spirited moments of violence which is what makes this worth watching, but it’s not quite the revenge-fest I wanted.