![]() ![]() The inevitable happens, and there is a certain quiet, desperate melancholy to the whole thing that is very affecting, as Helena awkwardly makes dinner, attempts small talk and then gives up the pretence and makes her intentions and desires clear. The first act plays out much as the premise would suggest, an interstellar liaison between a lonely colonist and a stand-offish engineer. Instead, it manages to skilfully combine the two, in a low-budget production that makes excellent use out of its numerically limited sets, cast and scope. A Spanish-language film out of Spain and Columbia, Orbiter 9 could easily devolve into a maudlin and insipid love story to the detriment of the science-fiction thesis it wants to make. Their limited but entangling time together leads to explosive revelations, as every part of Helena’s life is revealed to be a facade. Isolated on a long-haul colonial trip, Helena (Clara Lago) sees another person for the first time in years when Alex (Alex Gonzalez) arrives for a brief stop-over to fix a mechanical problem. Like them, Manhunt features lots of doves (some of which literally interrupt the action), but it simply isn’t as entertaining or watchable. Perhaps I’m better off with Woo’s western efforts, like Face/Off or Mission Impossible II, engaging action thrillers that were polished, enjoyable experiences even if they crossed into the realm of silliness or satire. If Woo is seeking for this to be a revival of what appears to be a somewhat flagging career, then he is just going to have to keep trying. Hand-to-hand, gunfights, even a jet-ski chase, they are all here, and some of them are quite diverting, but there is nothing in Manhunt that would stay long in the memory. Woo is clearly more interested in the action, and his operatic slow-motion style is well in evidence here, it being the bread-and-butter style film-making that keeps Manhunt from being a complete disaster. It’s acted fine, even if the script the cast is given goes from hackneyed to bizarre at the drop of a hat (“There’s only one end for a fugitive…a dead end”), and the clunky manner of the editing doesn’t help. The film goes so far past its start point, it’s like you’re watching a different one by the time the credits roll. It’s a weird mix of boilerplate and absurd: the man on the run, the corporate intrigue, the cynical veteran and the naive rookie working together, like any one of a million crime dramas you’ve seen, but then throw in the insanity: a sibling pair of genetically altered assassins, increasingly improbable fight scenes (one, in a country house, just won’t stop escalating) and the aforementioned super-soldiers. To say that Manhunt goes off the rails in the latter half of its very lengthy running time would be an understatement, but it is not without its charms. What I got instead was some sort of bizarre amalgamation of The Fugitive, Serpico and The Winter Soldier, as Manhunt rapidly goes from “Man on the run for a crime he didn’t commit” combined with “The one good cop” to vast government conspiracies, secret labs and super-soldier serum(!). Part of my issue with Manhunt came from blinkered expectations: it being John Woo, I was expecting lots of kinetic action sequences wrapped around a half-decent, but grounded, plot. I am not as familiar with the back catalogue of John Woo as I perhaps should be, given his apparent importance for a whole geographical portion of the film industry, and that was one of the reasons I decided to give Manhunt, an adaptation of a Japanese film, a go. One of the only one who doubts the convenience is veteran detective Yamura (Masaharu Fukuyama): his own hunt for Du will eventually unearth a conspiracy of epic proportions. When Du Qiu (Zhang Hanyu), the lawyer for a major pharmaceutical firm, finds a dead woman in his bed, he is forced to go on the run from a police force happy to believe he is the killer.
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