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"Night Hunter" (2018) written and directed by David Raymond is quite the miss / L. Features an initially interesting premise and a great cast, but just doesn't stick the landing or even get off the ground to begin with in my opinion.

Detective Marshall (Henry Cavill) investigates a suicide case which links back to a serial abductor and killer of women. Marshall also has a daughter which makes his work more personal and meaningful to him as he wants to protect her as well. They capture the depraved man and try to get him to talk but he is too far gone so they are having some difficulty getting answers and closing cases he is tied to. We also follow a man named Cooper (Ben Kingsley) who spends his years as a vigilante castrating sexual predators.

Night Hunter might be the most boring thriller I've ever seen, and I was actively falling asleep throughout. There is zero intrigue to this story because it's essentially solved immediately. I assumed this would be more of a "chase" film where Marshall has trouble tracking down his perp, but the opposite happens and he actually captures the perp immediately, and the rest of the film is devoted to weak social messaging and half baked attempts at tension and "gravitas." Eventually the perp does escape captivity but I felt his plan was both too clever (This is some supervillain level planning) for an idiot like him, and also outright ridiculous in the sense that he should not be able to escape a police cell so easily.

The film fully derails for me once we get into the multiple personalities segment, I was rolling my eyes pretty hard at the entire charade and how poorly executed it was (One of the personalities thinks the other one is annoying, so it's willing to exchange important case details if it gives the other annoying personality a stuffed bear to calm him), but it actually takes it a step even further when it introduces the twin at which point I felt we had crossed into borderline fantasy territory. Another greatly annoying factor in this is the cops themselves. I think as I grow older and become more mature I'm finding it harder and harder to take this "badass" cop mentality seriously, as I personally find their blatant abuse of power and over the top brutality both physically and mentally to be impossible to get behind. Commissioner Harper (Stanley Tucci) refuses to arrest Cooper despite the fact Cooper is very literally chopping off the balls of men he perceives to be a threat to women, and Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) asks the perp if he likes tits and then unbuttons her shirt to . . . I guess either seduce or torment the perp, but neither of these things are exactly professional behavior.

Night Hunter sucks unfortunately. Mixed messaging and signals, and an utterly boring plot to go along with it.

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