I got my weekly email from the drive-in movie theater in Montclair, California -- the same one I haven't been to in more than seven years, but I'm not unsubscribing from the emails of random restaurants where I once placed an online reservation, so I'm certainly not unsubscribing from a mailing list that tells me about movies.
The email subject is always a little teaser, often a play on words, related to a couple of the movies you might choose at the theater this week. In fact, it's often phrased as an actual choice. This week's was "Monster Hunter or Hunter Hunter?"
I knew Monster Hunter was the new collaboration between Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson and his muse, Milla Jovovich -- in fact, I'd be going to an advanced screening of it on Monday night if my wife didn't have a conflict. (It doesn't open here until New Year's Day.) But I was curious to see which film they were describing as "hunter hunter," surely a play on words based on the title of the first film.
Well, that film is actually called Hunter Hunter.
It's funny that two films with such similar names would be in the cinema at the same time. But my real takeaway was how good that title was.
There are some films that just repeat a word in their titles, like Runner Runner. I haven't actually seen that film, but from the synopsis on Wikipedia it does not sound like that title is doing anything of actual linguistic interest.
Hunter Hunter is a whole different story. It appears to be a story about a hunter who hunts hunters. Hence, Hunter Hunter. (I guess Runner Runner could be about a runner who runs other runners, but I'm not willing to give it that credit.)
Now, it appears from a quick synopsis that this hunter is not human. I was thinking of something like Dexter, a serial killer killing other serial killers. I might actually like that idea better.
In this case it's a wolf that's the hunter, but the wolf is indeed hunting hunters. Fur trappers, more precisely.
There was probably some small amount of risk in greenlighting this title, elegant and clever though it may be. Would people get it? Would they just think it was a random word repetition, like Runner Runner?
I haven't conducted a poll or anything so I don't know the answer to that. I do know that some person somewhere who controlled this film's financing or distribution decided it was a good risk to take, and indeed, I think they were right. Because the phrasing "______ hunter" is already common to us -- you know, like The Deer Hunter -- I suspect your average person can reverse engineer the meaning of the title.
More crucially, I think they probably experience the little frisson of satisfaction that I experienced when they realize what that title is doing. The fact that the word is the same provides an immediate obstacle to comprehending its meaning, but that obstacle is overcome in maybe five to ten seconds ... kind of like your brain processing a joke whose punchline took a moment to set in.
It should be noted that saying the title correctly out loud requires a slight change in your pronunciation of the two words. You have to go up a bit on the first syllable of the first word -- say it out loud to see what I mean -- and then say the second one with more of a flat tone. The title forces your brain into a kind of heteronym, which is when two words are spelled the same but given different means when pronounced differently. The examples the internet gave for a heteronym are "lead" as in to pave the way and "lead" as in the element on the periodic table, and though the two pronunciations of "hunter" in this scenario have more to do with emphasis than the actual sound of the vowels, it creates a similar effect. Interestingly, in this case, both "pronunciations" mean the same thing, but the emphasis creates a perspective and a relationship between the two instances of the word.
Anyway, the credentials of the people who made this film are not very strong, or unknown at best. The director (Shawn Linden) does not yet have his own Wikipedia page, and the most recognizable names in the cast are two washed up former teen actors (Devon Sawa and Nick Stahl). So I don't know if I'll be prioritzing this one.
That said, all you have to do is skip down a few paragraphs on Wikipedia to note that the film has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and then your interest spikes a bit more.
No Australian release date is listed on IMDB, so I'll have to "stick a pin" in this one, as they say down here.
Or, maybe, hunt it out in some other way.
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