The concept is great: survive the hunt for as long as possible and get paid an increasing amount of money for every hour survived.
So why doesn't the movie work? For all sorts of reasons.
Five hunters, of which there were a maximum of three in the game at any given moment, and sometimes only one or two. Why? The hunted prey gives out a location ping every hour, so why aren't all five taking part?
The ridiculous odds of being able to predict an exact location that the prey would head to is too implausible to be realistic. Not only that, but commandeering the church, making it inaccessible to the general public and knowing that the prey would go exactly to 'confession' was just too ridiculous. It reminded me of later Saw movies in which everything is pre-planned in reverse order. There comes a point where you just cannot predict that much. They tried to explain away the implausibilities through narrative, but that didn't make them any less implausible. And the stereotypical hoo-hah-hah villains were just plain annoying, especially the vicar hunter.
Also, the changing of the rules concerning firearms irritated me quite a bit. So, it's OK to riddle an entire gang with machine gun bullets to get to the prey, but not OK to kill the prey itself with a gun? Don't be ridiculous! If guns are not allowed, that's it; you can't just administer the final kill with a knife and say that's acceptable because it's not a gun. The gun was used to get to that point in the hunt.
Making things realistic and plausible seems less of an option in movies these days because of how fast they're being churned out, which is what spoiled this quite entertaining concept and movie considerably. If they had kept it simple, it could have been a great watch.
It was so inconsistent! The idea is to corner the prey through gradual pressure and take it down. So, why would you throw a knife in broad daylight at a fully populated train, smashing a window in the process? About 50 witnesses saw that. And walking through a shopping mall with a visibly giant hunting knife stuck in the prey's ribs? If you're going to throw knives and use uzis to eliminate entire gangs, why not just stick the knife in and run away?
And where were the cops at key moments? Having brunch? Oh, come on! You can't bribe or blind every cop in the city, surely? Nor were there any cops or security on the cruise boat, which just so happened to have a hunter conveniently dressed in waitress uniform onboard, on the off chance that a ticket would be stolen for the voyage by the prey? Come off it, you can't possibly predict such things.
Funnily enough, I found Most Dangerous Game to be quite entertaining, but am much more frustrated at all the little no-go areas that spiraled it into being a dud. You can't just explode an entire factory, hug your wife because you've survived to daylight and then walk into the sunset with 24 million in the bank! Well, you can, but only in movies.
So why doesn't the movie work? For all sorts of reasons.
Five hunters, of which there were a maximum of three in the game at any given moment, and sometimes only one or two. Why? The hunted prey gives out a location ping every hour, so why aren't all five taking part?
The ridiculous odds of being able to predict an exact location that the prey would head to is too implausible to be realistic. Not only that, but commandeering the church, making it inaccessible to the general public and knowing that the prey would go exactly to 'confession' was just too ridiculous. It reminded me of later Saw movies in which everything is pre-planned in reverse order. There comes a point where you just cannot predict that much. They tried to explain away the implausibilities through narrative, but that didn't make them any less implausible. And the stereotypical hoo-hah-hah villains were just plain annoying, especially the vicar hunter.
Also, the changing of the rules concerning firearms irritated me quite a bit. So, it's OK to riddle an entire gang with machine gun bullets to get to the prey, but not OK to kill the prey itself with a gun? Don't be ridiculous! If guns are not allowed, that's it; you can't just administer the final kill with a knife and say that's acceptable because it's not a gun. The gun was used to get to that point in the hunt.
Making things realistic and plausible seems less of an option in movies these days because of how fast they're being churned out, which is what spoiled this quite entertaining concept and movie considerably. If they had kept it simple, it could have been a great watch.
It was so inconsistent! The idea is to corner the prey through gradual pressure and take it down. So, why would you throw a knife in broad daylight at a fully populated train, smashing a window in the process? About 50 witnesses saw that. And walking through a shopping mall with a visibly giant hunting knife stuck in the prey's ribs? If you're going to throw knives and use uzis to eliminate entire gangs, why not just stick the knife in and run away?
And where were the cops at key moments? Having brunch? Oh, come on! You can't bribe or blind every cop in the city, surely? Nor were there any cops or security on the cruise boat, which just so happened to have a hunter conveniently dressed in waitress uniform onboard, on the off chance that a ticket would be stolen for the voyage by the prey? Come off it, you can't possibly predict such things.
Funnily enough, I found Most Dangerous Game to be quite entertaining, but am much more frustrated at all the little no-go areas that spiraled it into being a dud. You can't just explode an entire factory, hug your wife because you've survived to daylight and then walk into the sunset with 24 million in the bank! Well, you can, but only in movies.