There’s something rather poetic about the battle of wills between man and beast. The hunter and the hunted. The predator and the prey. In literature, there are few more poetically powerful tales than Captain Ahab versus Moby Dick. On the big screen, Liam Neeson fighting a wolf with his bare hand in Grey or Brody, Quint and Hooper trying to take down the mother of all great white sharks, male scintillating cinema. In The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale, the race is on to kill ‘the lord of the mountain’.
Renowned hunter Chun Man-duk (Min-sik Choi) lives with his teenage son Seok (Sung Yoo-bin) in Japanese occupied Korea. After the tragic death of his wife, Chun has retired from hunting but Seok wishes to emulate his father, despite not inheriting his skills. The Japanese governor general (Ren Osugi) is determined to kill the last tiger in Korea, a huge beast known locally as the ‘Mountain Lord’. Gu-kyung (Man-sik Jeong) leads a band of local hunters, but their attempts are proving fruitless. When the stakes rise, he takes desperate measures.
The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale is a brilliant cat and mouse story which encompasses the politics of occupation. Strangely, it’s reminiscent of Predator in many ways. The tiger is a huge killing machine with almost supernatural powers. There are some brilliant fight scenes which director Hoon-jung Park uses to powerful effect, bringing to mind The Revenant. The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale is an epic battle between man and man-eater.
The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale is released on DVD and Blu-ray by Eureka Entertainment on 6 November.
