Daniel Nettheim directs Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill and Frances O’Connor in this existential adventure about the hunt for an extinct tiger. 

Two films smashed to parts and rewelded together. One perfect: Dafoe’s expert merc, out in the gorgeously stark Tasmanian wilderness, setting traps, roughing the elements and growing paranoid alternately that there’s something else out there with him / there is nothing else out there with him. One uninspired and cliched: as his closed off anti-hero frustratingly returns to base camp every 12 days to connect with his predecessor’s grieving family. A shame as the film does expose some interesting concerns on both working communities reactions to green activists and grief –  but they get in the way of what we want to see more of; which is an increasingly animalistic Dafoe punishing his weathered body, out snipering rivals and punishing himself down jagged ravines. That is where the movie’s beauty, power and uniqueness lie but an overriding urge to devote a good 45 minutes to him cleaning his landlady’s bath and looking at her malnourished kids’ crayon doodlings dilutes these pleasures.

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