THE HUNTING PARTY LOCATES THE WORLD’S MOST WANTED MAN–A SERBIAN WAR CRIMINAL
From 1985, when the Dayton Peace Accords ended the Bosnian War, Radovan Karadžić (aka the Fox), Bosnian Serb leader, has had a $5 million bounty on his head for war crimes (ethnic cleansing, rape, body mutilation, etc.) yet remains at large despite the presence of American troops and UN personnel in Bosnia. Why? The Hunting Party, directed and written by Richard Shepard, attempts to answer the question by dramatizing an escapade of five American journalists, as reported in an article in Esquire by Scott Anderson. With occasional voiceovers by Duck (played by Terrence Howard), cameraman for TV news reporter Simon Hunt (played by Richard Gere), the film establishes Hunt as an excellent journalist who loses his cool after his Bosniac girlfriend is gunned down during the war. Hunt, fired for going to pieces during a live TV broadcast, reappears in Bosnia in 1990 just as awardwinning cameraman Duck returns to the country for a commemoration of five years of peace. Believing that he is hot on the trail of Karadžić (played by Ljubomir Kerekes), Hunt persuades Duck and a youthful sidekick Benjamin (played by Jesse Eisenberg) to join him in the manhunt into Bosnian Serb territory (the actual filming outside of Sarajevo is in Croatia). In the process, he runs into Boris (played by Mark Ivanir), a UN official who, salivating that they are CIA agents, unofficially leads them to Mirjana (played by Diane Kruger), an erstwhile girlfriend of one of the Fox’s bodyguards. She assumes that Hunt’s party consists of CIA agents, word spreads that they are after Karadžić, and his goons soon capture all three. The Fox orders Hunt killed, but the real CIA rescues them without also capturing Karadžić. The next part of the story is apocryphal but will be well received by filmviwers hoping for closure over the puzzling noncapture of the Fox. Boris suggests that the deal at Dayton was to allow Karadžić immunity from prosecution if he would step down (as he did) as the Bosnian Serb leader. Titles at the end provide photos of four of the five journalists mistaken for CIA agents featured in the Esquire article, indicate that the UN sent Boris to an African posting immediately after the incident, and hint that the search for Osama Bin Laden is phony. The Hunting Party, accordingly, has been nominated by the Political Film Society for best film exposé and best film on human rights of 2007. MH