AllMovie

Izuru Narushima's The Hunter and the Hunted is a singularly low-key and droll crime drama, focusing as it does on the kindly mentor relationship that a wily old thief takes up with a devoted but scatterbrained cop. The film is slow-paced and captivating only in fits and starts. It's a moderately enjoyable film, largely for its performances and its sharply observed workplace comedy and family drama, but Narushima's dignified compositions and avoidance of melodrama are thwarted by the film's overly emphatic score and red herring-riddled denouement. The film is most successful at delineating the nature of both familial and unlikely collegial bonds between its characters. These relationships are intriguing in no small part due to the exquisite work of star Koji Yakusho. Akira Emoto, as the intrepid cop's mentor/nemesis, is also very good, but Yakusho is at the moral and emotional core of the film, and his performance gives it weight. There is a beautiful scene in the film in which Yakusho reluctantly and awkwardly shares a moment of passion with Makiko (Yui Natsukawa), his young daughter's caretaker. It's such a sweet, believable, and well-played scene, in fact, that the film loses some of its appeal when the story shifts away from their relationship. But unsatisfying endings to worthwhile relationships have been known to happen in real life on occasion, and the film does succeed in exploring the sacrifices one is sometimes called upon to make for the happiness of one's children and the delicate balance one must strike between family life, work, and intimate relations.