REVIEW:<\/strong> It\u2019s gotten to the point where I more or less automatically dismiss movies Mel Gibson appears in as an actor. As a director, he\u2019s still pretty much at the top of his game (if we can ignore\u00a0Flight Risk<\/a>, that is), but as a movie star he tends to get slotted into the same kind of low-rent B-movies Bruce Willis made in his latter era, usually in small supporting roles. You know the type of films\u2014they\u2019re often called \u201cgeezer teasers,\u201d<\/a> and for the most part aren\u2019t worth watching.<\/p>\n But the downside of this is that it\u2019s hard to tell when Gibson is in a movie as the lead, as he\u2019s always top-billed no matter how small his role is. As such,\u00a0Hunting Season\u00a0initially escaped my attention, until word got out that Gibson is actually the lead\u2014and for me, an actioner with Gibson front and center is always worth checking out. Even some of his later-era vehicles, like\u00a0Blood Father\u00a0and\u00a0Get the Gringo, are gems.<\/p>\n Sadly,\u00a0Hunting Season\u00a0is no gem, as it suffers from the same issues many of Gibson\u2019s VOD movies have in recent years\u2014namely that the directors, in this case R.J. Collins, have clearly had to make do with such a rushed production schedule, from pre-to-post, that the chances of making a good movie are practically nil.\u00a0Hunting Season\u00a0isn\u2019t awful, and Collins does the best he can with the material, but there\u2019s no denying that were Gibson not the star, it would be immediately disposable.<\/p>\n That said, Gibson is still an incredibly dynamic lead. While he doesn\u2019t resemble the young, handsome star he was in his youth, Gibson\u2014with his grizzled look and big bushy beard\u2014still looks cool and carries himself with gravitas. There are flashes of the old Mel, or at least the kind of Mel we\u2019d be getting if he were afforded bigger budgets for his action flicks. He doesn\u2019t phone it in, and making it a father\/daughter story was a smart move. You believe Gibson as Bo, a guy with a shady past who\u2019s raising his daughter, Tag (Sofia Hublitz), to be self-sufficient and an expert shot (he buys her a handgun for her birthday). Yet he\u2019s also shown to be loving, supportive, and willing to let her lead her own life\u2014making him unstereotypical for this kind of role. Rather than being overprotective, he teaches her to protect herself.<\/p>\n When the bad guys make the mistake of crossing him,\u00a0Hunting Season\u00a0is fun to watch. Too bad it takes about seventy minutes of the ninety-minute running time for things to get really good. There\u2019s too much flat domestic drama, making it hard to invest in or believe Bo\u2019s need to do right by Hennig\u2019s January. Tag mentions Bo was named after a Louis L\u2019Amour character, which makes the quasi-western intent of the movie clear, but it lacks any sense of atmosphere. Jordi Moll\u00e0 is also way overboard as the psycho baddie, with indulgent monologues that make him come off as more of a bad-guy parody than someone with real menace.<\/p>\n![\"Hunting](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/hunting-season-movie-review-1024x538.jpg\")
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