Man Hunt

Directed by Fritz Lang, Man Hunt follows an American hunter (Walter Pidgeon’s Alan Thorndike) as he’s forced to go on the run after he’s caught with a rifle aimed at Hitler’s head. Filmmaker Lang, working from Dudley Nichols and Lamar Trotti’s screenplay, does a superb job of initially drawing the viewer into the hit-and-miss proceedings, as Man Hunt kicks off with a striking opening sequence detailing Alan’s initial exploits and eventual capture by the Nazis – with the impact of this stretch heightened by George Sanders’ captivating turn as a high-ranking German officer. It’s disappointing to note, then, that Man Hunt‘s grip on the viewer is slowly-but-surely loosened by a meandering midsection lacking in overtly compelling elements, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the far-from-enthralling vibe is compounded by a continuing emphasis on Alan’s tiresome encounters with Joan Bennett’s Jerry Stokes. (Bennett’s broad, ineffective performance does little to alleviate the pointlessness of these sequences, ultimately.) And although Lang breaks up the tedium with an admittedly thrilling chase sequence set within London’s underground, Man Hunt doesn’t completely recover from its underwhelming second act until it rolls into a final stretch that boasts an electrifying confrontation between Pidgeon and Sanders’ respective figures – which does, in the final analysis, cement the picture’s place as a woefully erratic endeavor that feels like it should be much, much better.

*** out of ****