The liberals in 'The Hunt' are lethal

After a delay, this violent bit of pseudo-satire arrives in theaters.

The Hunt originally was scheduled to be released last September but was delayed after mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. Violent and armed-to-the-teeth, Hunt has arrived and it’s safe to say that the movie doesn’t live up to its volatile hype.

The Hunt has one of those “what-if” premises. What if a group of liberal elites decided to join forces to hunt down and kill selected members of the various groups it finds “deplorable:" i.e, all those who fall short of the rigid political correctness standards supposedly espoused by liberals or who support an unnamed president who all elitists disdain?

As you might already have guessed, the movie matches its violence with cliches about both those it deems as champagne-sipping liberals and those it deems as backward bigots. Although presented for laughs, the stereotypes are drawn in too broad a fashion to have any real bite.

The Hunt also employs a blood-splattering level of violence, the sort of mayhem you expect from movies in which the carnage occupies the uneasy terrain between humor and repulsion.

The Hunt provides actress Betty Gilpin with a showcase opportunity and she makes the most of the it. Gilpin plays a badass woman who’s captured and hunted by the elites along with 11 others. It's all part of a lethal game. Kidnap the so-called "deplorables." Arm them for the sake of feigned fairness and then hunt them down like dogs.

Unlike her fellow sufferers, Gilpin has near superpowers when it comes to survival. The movie never shows Gilpin’s character spewing racist comments but relies on her southern accent to suggest that she might hold all the "lower-class" prejudices the movie seems to expect her to have.

Oddly, the movie turns Gilpin's Crystal into the only character for whom it's possible to root, which forces the screenplay to engage in some end-of-picture wriggling.

Director Craig Zobel (Compliance) keeps the movie zipping along, but the mixture of violence and humor and humorously depicted violence struck me as skin deep.

When Gilpin’s character squares off against the mysterious woman who runs the hunt (the actress who plays her probably is intended a surprise), the movie pretty much loses all traces of satire in favor of a no-holds-barred knife-wielding battle.

In the end, The Hunt expends most of its creative energy cooking up violent encounters; the rest, not nearly isn't as well thought out. Had The Hunt realized Gilpin’s full potential it might have jettisoned its superficial culture-wars BS and given us a female action hero worthy of a franchise.

Are people really this gullible?

A lengthy article at Courier-Journal.com changed my mind about Compliance, a movie that would seem far-fetched and contrived if it weren't based on real events.

Taking its cue from a vicious 2004 prank that took place at a McDonald's in Mount Washington, Ky.,  and from criminal episodes reported at  70 additional fast-food locations, Compliance becomes a morally complex look at human behavior that leaves you shaking your head in disbelief.

Director Craig Zobel, who also wrote the screenplay for Compliance, seems to have selected various parts of the story from several such incidents, but it's important to know that -- for the most part -- Compliance is more docudrama than fabrication.

Having said that, it should also be noted that Zobel has assembled his movie in a way that not only builds tension but challenges an audience.

Set at a fast-food outlet in Ohio, the movie establishes its milieu before getting down to business. A man claiming to be a policeman phones the manager (Ann Dowd), telling her that one of her employees (Dreama Walker) has been accused of stealing money from a woman's purse. We hear the voice of this policeman (Pat Healy) who mostly remains unseen.

At first, the call sounds reasonable enough. The policeman claims to want to quickly clear things up and move on. As the title suggests, the manager complies: She's in the middle of a busy Friday, and doesn't want any trouble. The supposed cop even knows the name of her regional manager and says he has discussed the matter with him.

As the movie progresses, the man on the phone  becomes more demanding, more demeaning and more sexual. Walker's Becky becomes the target of a variety of humiliations that are not easy to watch, so much so that the movie debuted to walk-outs at January's Sundance Film Festival.

Let me say this clearly: If you don't know what you're getting into, Compliance can be a rough ride. Consider yourself warned.

I'd say that Zobel has succeeded in directing in a way that's neither exploitative nor titillating, although much of what happens in Compliance certainly is alarming.

Before it's done, Compliance has become a study in the power of suggested authority and the gullibility and weakness of people who -- in forsaking common sense and their own moral standards -- participate in all manner of egregious behavior. The story is bizarre -- and all the more troubling because it's true.