Apparently extinct since the 1930s, the Tasmanian Tiger resembled an uncanny assortment of mismatched parts from other animals. Daniel Nettheim's film is equally weird and motley. Following up on sightings of a surviving specimen of the beast, a shadowy company hires the hunter (Willem Dafoe ) of the title to track it down and kill it. Their reason for this is not very interesting, but what matters is the metaphor, the symbolic confrontation between human and animal, both the last of their kind, at the behest of a soulless corporation. Dafoe's depiction of the human side of the equation gets a little dodgy; he may look as wild as the unearthly landscape, but as soon as he meets a couple of cute kids and their grieving mother, he turns into a pussycat. What follows is predictable, a pastiche of conventions, but strange nonetheless, and not always in a good way. Be that as it may, the concluding scenes are haunting in their depiction of the tragic love between human beings and nature.
