denzil-09434 The opening titles give the clue. All the finance has come from one state funded quango or another. This means one thing only: Every money making production company on earth has passed on the script. With good reason. It's lame. The photography and locations are lovely but the locations are nonsense. The act on which the plot depends happens in a port of arrival to NZ. The rest of the action, which is in a day's walk of said port is in the mountains and fjords of the SW S Island. That is impossible. Then we come to casting. My first impression was, Why cast Ray Winstone as a Boer if he can't get within a mile of the accent? After about 20 minutes the answer is clear. Nobody else would do it. It's one of the weakest scripts I've ever suffered. Perhaps Ray doesn't gamble as responsibly as he would have us believe.

Nat Williams I didn't think it was possible, but I finally watched a Ray Winstone movie that wasn't very good. "Tracker" has a fine premise and could have provided a valuable history lesson, as few Americans (myself included) have little knowledge of the Boer Wars. However, despite the gorgeous New Zealand scenery, the plot, direction and acting are fairly lame. Temuera Morrison, playing the native Maori being tracked, overacts to an embarrassing degree and even Winstone - one of my favorite non-American actors - seems to be doing little more than going through the motions. The plot is predictable, the dialog stilted and the movie itself does little more than take up time.

perkypops There are many things to like about this film. The cinematography is wonderful; the story is simple; the acting is creditable. But sadly, for me, it is let down by a very unconvincing relationship between the "tracker" and the "tracked", both of whom work hard to shift the balance but, in my opinion, do not ever do so.The plot is familiar. "Savage" in the form of a returning Maori (Morrison) kills soldier in apparent self defence and runs. He is tracked by van Diemen (Winstone) a Boer with his own fish to fry and some disturbed and disturbing British soldiers. There is a promising start to the chase, but, as the "game of cat and mouse" should hot up it seems to cool off, evaporate and lose its way.Perhaps it gets bogged down in detail about what the players are doing in New Zealand in the first case and why they are fighting their corners. Whatever it is that flaws the early promise the film unravels and we are left with a rather predictable ending, and anti-climax, and no real resolution to the "game".I am sure there are much better scripts than this to transfer into film. Indeed much better use could and should have been made of this script.Disappointing.

Boloxxxi A former soldier of the Boer war arrives in New Zealand (1903) for reasons unknown (vacation?). Shortly thereafter a British soldier is killed in a conflict with a Maori (native New Zealander) when the soldier and his drinking buddies discover the Maori with a white woman in a barn. The Maori at the time was on a break from a whaling ship on which he served as a harpooner. On learning of the killing, the commander of the soldiers quickly organizes a hunting party with a tracker. He also enlists the aid of the Boer guy that may or may not be on vacation to assist his tracker. There is a nice reward of 100 sovereigns for the Maori alive and 25 dead. This guy needs the money, folks. No other reason to help the British soldiers. And so off they go into the wild.This movie is a little over an hour and a half but feels like two. This is because of the time spent with dull tracking of quarry and dull conversations with quarry. Who doesn't like a good chase or hunt? But in order to have that you have to find what the hunter and hunted are doing interesting. So (1) you need to get a real sense of their cleverness or ingenuity in trying to capture and avoid capture. And (2) there has to be a heightening of suspense based on a closing of the gap between them and a real sense of their desperation or motivation to succeed as a result; --whatever the cost.But in this movie I never felt that (1) anyone was being particularly cunning. They did the standard things we've all seen before; broke a branch to make it look like this is where someone went and backtracked over tracks to misdirect. This might have been clever at one time but now it's standard practice even for morons. And (2) I felt the tracking or pursuit in this movie was too leisurely; with the pursuer acting like he was just out for a stroll and not hunting a dangerous killer and the pursued acting like he was playing a little game of hide and seek with an old friend and not in peril for his life. The relationship between these two men bordered on comedy which made me think that maybe the producers should have just said "F!!ck it!" and gone that route. Perhaps they intended --at least in part-- that the movie be a "character study" of the two men; learning what motivated them and who they were thru civil conversation. In other words: Even though I've got a rope around your neck that doesn't mean we can't share. Love, Boloxxxi.