We’re obviously supposed to root for either Marshall or Michael, especially given the over-simplified crime statistics that Michael presents to Marshall: he claims that 80 percent of sex offenders re-offend, though a quick Google suggests otherwise. But Raymond and the gang don’t give us many reasons to sympathize or even care about either faction, not beyond Cavill and Kingsley’s well-deployed charms. Granted, that may be enough for some viewers, especially since Cavill is often filmed with carefully mussed-up hair, a lumberjack beard, and rolled-up sleeves … even when he’s outdoors … in the winter. And Kingsley’s soft-spoken line delivery is a balm after so many scenes of Fletcher, in character, running roughshod over poor Daddario, who has the thankless task of bonding with Fletcher’s utterly irredeemable villain.
But that’s the problem with “Night Hunter” in a nutshell: Raymond spends so much time suggesting that his characters and their situational peril are complicated that he never actually makes them complicated. The childhood neglect that informs Simon’s character is mostly used as a plot device, just as there’s nothing substantial to back up the greeting-card-worthy speech that Marshall gives to his social-media-addicted teen daughter Faye (Emma Tremblay): “The people I chase live in the dark, and I could see them really easily until you came along. Because ... you are the light." I’m not sure where the makers of “Night Hunter” hid that light, but it sure isn’t in their movie.
The most annoying thing about a movie that’s simultaneously as preachy and grim as “Night Hunter” isn’t that it’s ideologically repugnant, but that it’s also dramatically inert and actively unpleasant. I, myself, am a Stanley Tucci man (he is money in the bank, except maybe in the “Hunger Games” movies), but even I cringed when he, as the stereotypically overworked Commish, tries to take a swing at Simon (That guy killed a half dozen of my guys, and some had families!). Testing the limits of good taste in otherwise formulaic grimdark entertainment is one thing, but pushing against those boundaries for its own sake is just tiresome.
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