Stone Cold Steve Austin is in fine form here as he plays a former Border Patrol officer in Texas who loses his partner (Eric Roberts, wasted in a pre-credits cameo) in a bust gone bad. Four years later, he's working in Montana (although the movie was actually shot in British Columbia), trying to raise a rebellious teenaged daughter (Marie Avgeropoulos) as a single dad. Then the two of them are confronted by a gang of robbers, who need Stone Cold to guide them through the mountains; they're in pursuit of the robbery mastermind, who'd absconded with the loot.
Frank Hannah wrote this refreshingly uncomplicated storyline, which suffers from some implausibilities, but manages to remain watchable and entertaining. At least it has a hero who takes some lumps and isn't always ten steps ahead of the bad guys the entire time. As with "The Stranger" (the last Stone Cold vehicle this viewer has seen), SC isn't the problem here. He shows poise and confidence, and can get his lines out adequately. He may not be terribly expressive, but you still have no doubt as to his ultimate ability to mess up his opponents in a major way. His somewhat antagonistic relationship with his kid is at least somewhat believable.
There are not many familiar faces here, other than Stone Cold, Roberts, Gil Bellows as the main bad guy, action genre icon Gary Daniels, and veteran Donnelly Rhodes as the expendable local Sheriff. The cast is pretty nondescript, but passable; they play characters despicable enough that one is amused to see them get their just desserts. Bellows is a mild hoot; even though he's not that intimidating, he still gets turned into the kind of superhuman villain that will have to be "killed" a few times. The filmmakers might have done better to make Daniels, as the toughest of Bellows' associates, the final antagonist.
The writing may have its fair share of stupidities (why is it that in so many movies of this ilk, cops NEVER wait for their backup?), but this viewer personally is able to forgive a fair bit of silliness, as long as a movie holds his attention. And "Hunt to Kill" is a fair thriller that did at least manage to do that.
Six out of 10.
Frank Hannah wrote this refreshingly uncomplicated storyline, which suffers from some implausibilities, but manages to remain watchable and entertaining. At least it has a hero who takes some lumps and isn't always ten steps ahead of the bad guys the entire time. As with "The Stranger" (the last Stone Cold vehicle this viewer has seen), SC isn't the problem here. He shows poise and confidence, and can get his lines out adequately. He may not be terribly expressive, but you still have no doubt as to his ultimate ability to mess up his opponents in a major way. His somewhat antagonistic relationship with his kid is at least somewhat believable.
There are not many familiar faces here, other than Stone Cold, Roberts, Gil Bellows as the main bad guy, action genre icon Gary Daniels, and veteran Donnelly Rhodes as the expendable local Sheriff. The cast is pretty nondescript, but passable; they play characters despicable enough that one is amused to see them get their just desserts. Bellows is a mild hoot; even though he's not that intimidating, he still gets turned into the kind of superhuman villain that will have to be "killed" a few times. The filmmakers might have done better to make Daniels, as the toughest of Bellows' associates, the final antagonist.
The writing may have its fair share of stupidities (why is it that in so many movies of this ilk, cops NEVER wait for their backup?), but this viewer personally is able to forgive a fair bit of silliness, as long as a movie holds his attention. And "Hunt to Kill" is a fair thriller that did at least manage to do that.
Six out of 10.