“It takes an awful lot to kill a person,” observes Bowdrie, the central character in RJ Collins’ thriller Hunting Season. It’s one of those lines that immediately signals what kind of story we are entering: a world where survival is not just physical, but deeply psychological — where a man’s past is never really past.
As played by Mel Gibson, Bowdrie is the strong, silent type, only speaking when he must. A man who has clearly chosen isolation, retreating into a cabin in the woods with his teenage daughter Tag (an excellent Sofia Hublitz, Ozark). He only goes into town when necessary. In storytelling terms, this is a classic setup: the hero who has withdrawn from the world, carrying an untold backstory, hoping the past will leave him alone.
But stories don’t work that way.
Because what we sense almost immediately is this: a man who wants to be left alone is usually a man who won’t be. And indeed, it’s clear that Bowdrie will soon be forced to demonstrate that he has developed some serious fighting skills somewhere along the way — skills that belong to a previous chapter of his life, now reawakened.
The film’s plot is set in motion when Tag discovers a severely injured young woman washed up from the river near their cabin. She’s suffered bullet wounds, and Bowdrie — revealing yet another layer of his hidden past — sets out to remove the bullets. He advises Tag to leave the room, telling her, “It’s gonna get pretty screamy in here.” A line that is both literal and symbolic: pain is unavoidable when truth surfaces.
The young woman, January (Shelley Hennig, Unfriended), is being pursued by a local gang led by the sadistic Alejandro (Jordi Molla). The criminals have already murdered a police deputy and January’s roommate. The stakes are clear. The danger is real. And Bowdrie, whether he likes it or not, steps back into the role he tried to abandon: protector.
He chooses to protect her while keeping her presence hidden from the local police — an important narrative choice that reinforces his distrust of systems and his reliance on his own moral code.
When a couple of thugs show up at his home looking for January, Bowdrie disposes of them efficiently, burning their bodies to erase the evidence. It’s brutal, but within the logic of his world, necessary. And in a subtle but meaningful moment, Tag reveals she is a chip off her old man’s block, showing her own skill with a rifle. The story quietly hints at legacy — how stories, behaviors, and survival patterns pass from one generation to the next.
Reminiscent of the B-movie actioners that Charles Bronson regularly delivered in the ‘80s, Hunting Season fits the mold of a lean, action-driven narrative often embraced by actors whose careers have shifted phases. Yet Mel Gibson does not simply walk through this role.
Instead, he brings an understated intensity that reminds us why he once carried entire films. More weathered now, yes — but that only adds depth. His blue eyes still carry that unmistakable fire, echoing his Lethal Weapon days, but now layered with experience, regret, and restraint.
Bowdrie speaks little, and when he does, every word counts. “I’ll make this simple,” he tells a captured thug, a strung-up lawnmower dangling dangerously close to the man’s face. “You tell me what I want to know or I’ll kill you.” It’s direct, stripped of drama — a man who no longer negotiates with chaos but cuts straight through it.
And yet, there are moments where a different tone emerges. When the thug refuses to talk, Bowdrie’s frustration turns almost playful: “What is wrong with you? If you had a lawnmower in my face, I’d tell you everything.” These glimpses of humor humanize him, reminding us that even hardened characters carry unexpected layers.
Gibson’s presence keeps the film afloat, while director Collins shows a strong sense for action, particularly in a well-choreographed shoot-out when Bowdrie storms the criminals’ lair after they capture January. Screenwriter Adam Hampton supports this with dialogue that gives the actors something substantial to work with — lines that feel grounded in character rather than spectacle.
And then there is Alejandro.
Stories like this live or die by their villains, and Alejandro delivers. Eccentric, unpredictable, almost theatrical, he creates a fascinating counterpoint to Bowdrie’s restraint. Molla plays him with a strange, off-kilter energy that makes you question whether to laugh or feel uneasy — and that tension works.
Ultimately, it is this contrast that gives the story its final spark: the quiet warrior versus the flamboyant predator. Their climactic encounter is not just action — it is the collision of two very different stories, two ways of being in the world.
And that, perhaps, is what Hunting Season quietly reveals beneath its surface: no matter how far we retreat, our story follows us. And at some point, it asks to be lived again — not as we were, but as who we have become.